Jan Wawrzyniak,

Jan Wawrzyniak, *1971 in Leipzig (GDR) is a Berlin and Vestjylland based visual artist.

In 2011 he was awarded with the Will-Grohmann-Preis of the Akademie der Künste

Berlin.

2023 he founded umbrella | west coast exhibitions which he also runs.

 

With the exhibition

NEW LAST EQUAL UNEQUAL CERTAIN UNCERTAIN PRESENT

ABSENT,

we are presenting the first solo exhibition in Denmark by Jan Wawrzyniak

(born in 1971 in Leipzig, former GDR), an artist and curator who lives and works in

Berlin and at the Danish west coast. The exhibition features a small selection of

works created over the past 10 years.

Unless otherwise noted, the following texts are by the artist.

 

NEW

In 2022, I moved my studio to Vestjylland, where I have been running the kunsthal

umbrella west coast exhibitions since 2023. In recent years, my work has therefore

focused primarily on curating exhibitions of high artistic quality, mainly solo shows

by international and Danish artists.

Since then, I have used my visual experiences less to expand my own artistic

practice but more to use the kunsthal as a platform to present the works of other

artists through the eyes of an artist.

LAST

"Should we save absence or the void? Should we save this nothingness at the

heart of the image?"

(Jean Baudrillard from Why Hasn't Everything Already Disappeared?)

In 2023 I presented a series of untreated canvases at kajetan Berlin, titled Das

weiße Ballett. Previously I have spent many years visually engaging with the

critical experience of existence. This exhibition in Berlin clearly illustrated the state

of that confrontation at the time. The images themselves had disappeared, but the

empty canvases danced in celebration of their existence.

I turned the radicalnegativity of these undrawn pictures into a choreographed space:

into a white

(picture) ballet without pictures.

EQUAL

In the course of recent years, the idea of a picture of an open but at the same time

distanced and unstable opposite has grown so that neither the penetration of the

eye from outside makes it submissive, nor does it try to manipulate this exteriority.

Such a picture would be an emancipated, responsible and aporetic picture. And

that can only be, in turn, the visual assertion, which poses the question, which is

located on eyelevel, which is sensitive, aloof and simple, but not completely

transparent and not assimilable.

(From Broken and Lost Drawing, Edited by Museum Wiesbaden 2014)

UNEQUAL

Wawrzyniak limits himself to a few preferred and trusted tools: slightly off-kilter,

irregular formats, canvases primed mostly white, and charcoal, which together

enable him to devise––in a series of tonally nuanced greys––partly nebulous yet

always oddly precarious and indeterminate relationships between marked and

unmarked space.

(From press release Forms of Aporia, kajetan Berlin, 2019)

CERTAIN

François Morellet described it beautifully. A picture presupposes a great number

of decisions. And so he decided to create the most complex pictures possible

using as few decisions as he deemed necessary. The simplicity of the form is a

consequence of the reduction in the number of decisions. And the fewer decisions

there are, the easier is it to grasp the picture at first glance in its entirety.

(From Broken and Lost Drawing, Edited by Museum Wiesbaden 2014)

UNCERTAIN

The kind of perspectives I use are always ever hinted at, you could also describe

them as dead ends. I come up with different lines that provide the eye with a

channel to follow and then give it the runaround, so to speak. There are certain

perspectives that are flat. The centre is missing. Gaps are charged, and so on.

The point or dot to which it is heading is on the run itself. It simply isn’t there, or

there are several of them and they are also absent. At a given point, the drawing,

as it were, shuts the door in the face of the enquiring eye.

(From Broken and Lost Drawing, Edited by Museum Wiesbaden 2014)

PRESENT

The aspect of constant change and precarious instability goes beyond the purely

formal. Wawrzyniak’s works vividly demonstrate just how much our perception is

geared toward stability and clarity. Ultimately, this is precisely what captivates us in Wawrzyniak’s works

and keeps us hooked: the longing for stability and

unambiguity that is denied here. Viewed in this light, the works not only open the

door to an exploration of our own mechanisms of perception when viewing works

of art, but also to a reflection on expectations, experiences, and frustrations at all

levels of life and society.

(From press release Continued Drawing, m Bochum, 2014)

ABSENT

The grin still hovers in space long after the cat has departed.

(Lewis Carroll)

 

 

Selected solo and group exhibitions

Museum unter Tage, Bochum, 2024/2025, 2018

Note di Sguardi, Bologna, Cervia, Berlin, 2024

kajetan Berlin 2023, 2021, 2019, 2018

Kunstmuseum Ahlen 2023, 2009

valerie_traan_gallery Antwerpen 2022

Art Brussels with kajetan Berlin 2022, 2020

Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern 2021, 2012, 2008

Galerie m Bochum 2017, 2015, 2012, 2010, 2006

Peac Freiburg 2018

Weserburg | Museum für moderne Kunst Bremen 2017

Kunsthalle Rostock 2015, 2012

Museum Wiesbaden 2014, 2011

Bonnenfantenmuseum Maastricht 2014

Cultuurcentrum Mechelen 2013

Kunstmuseum Bonn 2013

Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz 2012

Akademie der Künste Berlin 2012, 2011

Kunstmuseum Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus 2012, 2008

Galerie Urs Meile, Luzern, 2011

Peter Freeman Inc. New York 2011

Kunsthalle Kiel 2011

Stiftung Situation Kunst Bochum 2011, 2008

Kunsthalle Leipzig 2011

Kunsthalle Erfurt 2007

Art Basel with Galerie m Bochum 2007, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2011, 2010

Art Cologne 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1994, 1991

Goethe-Institut, Tel Aviv, 1994

Frontiera – Forum junger Kunst in Europa, Bolzano, 1991

Jan Wawrzyniaks works can be found in various public and private collections, among

 

others:

Kunstmuseum Ahlen

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (nbk)

Stiftung Situation Kunst Bochum

Kunstmuseum Bonn

Collection of contemporary art of the Federal Republic of Germany

Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden

Museum Pfalzgalerie Kaiserslautern

Kolumba Kunstmuseum des Erzbistums Köln

Museum Morsbroich Leverkusen

Muzeum Sztuki Lodz

Westfälisches Landesmuseum Münster

Museum Wiesbaden

 

Curating at umbrella | west coast exhibitions

Ingo Meller, 2026

Omer Fast, 2026

Veit Stratmann, 2026

Young-Jae Lee, 2026

Sofiia Yesakova | Sascha Kregel, 2025

Undercurrents: Izabel Angerer, Lamine Diouf, Haleh Redjaian, Stephanie Schneider,

Bendikt Terwiel, 2025

Jacqueline Doyen, 2025

Paul Cunningham, 2025

Marc Nagtzaam, 2024

Abbas Kiarostami, 2024

Maria Bruun, 2024

Nicolai Howalt, 2023

Trine Søndergaard, 2023