Lot 29 | Christian Jankowski | Kunst + Krise

Kunst + Krise
‘Kunst + Krise (art + crisis)’ - two keywords that are mutually linked. What would art be without a crisis? Where to draw from? In the shadow of the 2008 financial crisis, Christian Jankowski is organising an auction at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin on the subject of the financial crisis and its effects on art and culture. He approaches public organisations and institutions, including the German Bundestag, the Berlin police, the fire brigade and the customs office, and asks them to donate objects for auction. The institutions offer him objects, which Jankowski collects. From a discarded typewriter to a confiscated teddy bear from the customs authorities to a firefighter's helmet, a wide variety of objects end up in the auction. During the sale, Jankowski declares these ‘donations from the state’ to be works of art. The buyer receives the respective object and a certificate. The auctioned amount is then donated in full to a cultural institution selected in advance by the donating public organisation.

Police motorbike suit
This work from 2010 is a motorbike uniform with a police inscription from the ‘’Kunst + Krise‘’ series. In addition to its determination as a work of art, it should also be seen as a contemporary document. The financial crisis of 2008 represents one of the greatest caesuras, which among other things caused global unemployment. The art market always reacts to crises in the global economy with a cyclical shift, as investing in art still appears particularly attractive in the first phase of a crisis (‘stable substitute investment’) and in the second phase, when supply exceeds demand, a fall in prices is to be expected. Jankowski's ‘A(u)ction’ becomes a performance; he uses this first phase of speculation to generate funds and supports ‘disadvantaged’ cultural institutions, such as the Neue Nationalgalerie.

Performance as art
Christian Jankowski's works are in the field of conceptual and performance art. His productions repeatedly scrutinise the mechanisms of the art market in a clever and subtle way. His first institutional solo exhibition, initiated by König, took place in 1998. In a performance, the artist wrote a book entitled ‘Mein erstes Buch’ (My first book) in reference to the city library in Frankfurt am Main, which was destroyed during the Second World War and then converted into the Portikus. With his performance and six consecutive installations, Jankowsi examines the effects of external stimuli on artistic creation. In 2016, he was the first artist to curate the European art biennial Manifesta under the title ‘What People do for Money’ in Zurich. Two years earlier, Kasper König curated the Manifesta in St. Petersburg. Jankowski also created a ‘’Tatort Münster (Münster Crime Scene)‘’ for König's ‘’Skulptur Projekte Münster‘’, in which he played his alter-ego ‘’Jan Christowski‘’.