Honza Zamojski
Fishing with John
12 September–31 October 2013
Opening: September 12, 6pm
Galeria Foksal (Foksal Gallery)
ul. Foksal 1 / 4
00-950 Warszawa
T +48228276243
foksal [at] mckis.waw.pl
What lies at the root of the concept for the exhibition is a synthesis between Honza Zamojski’s love of angling and his collector’s zeal. For several years now, he has been amassing photos of women posing with fish. Photographs made public on the Internet form the greater part of the collection, but it also features pictures printed in the columns of publications such as the venerable monthly, Wiadomości Wędkarskie (Angling News). At the Foksal Gallery, Zamojski has once again built a self-portrait, both literally and metaphorically. A monstrous, figurative sculpture pushes and distends its way into the gallery’s main exhibition space, whilst a bizarre and whimsical collection of ichthyological works irrupts into the office and archives, creating a new ecosystem inhabited by women, fish and curators. The passion for angling is, at one and the same time, a metaphor for a love of art and for an escape from it.
The publication accompanying the exhibition is a kind of experiment stemming from the uniting of two concepts, that of the “artist book” and that of the scholarly study; it is an experiment wherein the artist avails himself of the pen and knowledge of others in order to carry out an analysis of the problem which is of interest to him. Zamojski makes conscious use of the power of the word ‘research’ in the contemporary world and plays with the freedom we attain as a result of observing the outwardly rigorous rules of academe. He perversely mocks political correctness and he involves world authorities in his meta-story. The book becomes a work of art just as the collection of photos showing naked women with fish becomes a field of scholarly analysis, while the academic nature of the publication means that the self-evidently chauvinistic dimension of the collection fades into the background.
The authors of the texts are David Coggins, Jeffrey Kastner, Augusto Illuminati, Marian Paruzel and Przemysław Strożek.
The book has been co-published with the Italian publishing house Nero Publishing, which is undertaken the distribution. The publication will receive its international release at the NY Art Book Fair.
Publishers: Nero, Galeria Foksal, Mazovia Region Centre of Culture and Arts
The project was made possible by the support of Ministry of Culture and National Heritage
Partner: Adam Mickiewicz Institute
Supported by: Moś i Łuczak sp.j.
Media Patronage: TVP Kultura, Obieg, Szum, Wiadomości Wędkarskie