Artists

Assistant tutor at the Faculty of Art of the Pedagogical University of Krakow since 2016. Focuses on painting, objects and installations, and off-gallery activities. Scholarship holder under the Young Poland programme of the Minister of Culture (2018) and under the Polish Culture Around the World programme of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

 

KORNEL JANCZY
PUNKT NEMO

2019 / installation, varius objects, video / 8 x 8 x 4 m

 

Nemo Point – the oceanic pole of inaccessibility (48°52’6” S 123°23’6” W), is a spot on the ocean located farthest from the land. It is located in the southern regions of the Paci c Ocean, 2688 km from the closest land – Pitcairn Islands to the north, Easter Islands to the north-east and Maher Island near Marii Byrd Land in Antarctica.

 

Finally, since the orbit of our planet was populated by artificial satellites, there are no more places to be discovered on the Earth. Everything can be photographed at any moment with an amazing precision. So, what are today’s discoverers and explorers doing? Why are they pushing towards most inaccessible areas given that it can be presumed with a great accuracy what they can nd there? In the light of the thesis set in the first sentence, another question may be asked: aren’t they people who prefer hiding to discovering? They reach places that few would like to visit, and that’s where they can experience peace and silence. Can similar strategies be observed in the behaviour of another subcategory of travellers – travelling artists? Nemo Point installation is a metaphorical work, wherein four travellers - artists are drifting on a raft. An attempt to determine their gender, age and origin is thwarted by the camouflage made up by clothing that blends with other objects in the space. The adventurers are trying to find the title Nemo Point. Many allusions can be noticed: to such iconic paintings as The Raft of the Medusaby Théodore Géricault, romantic maritime landscapes by Caspar David Friedrich, or John Webber, James Cook’s onboard painter, and to works by contemporary artists. Jan Bas Ader, who set out alone on a journey through the Atlantic as part of the In Search of the Miraculous project but never came back; Chris Burden, who canoed alone around the Gulf of Mexico for eleven days, or the Meditation Boat by Ann Hamilton, where Buddhist monks could contemplate peacefully far from the city noise while sailing on Laos rivers.