Christian Jankowski

Christian Jankowski (born 1968 in Göttingen, West Germany) is a contemporary multimedia artist who largely works with video, installation and photography. He lives and works in Berlin and New York.

Jankowski's work has been associated with New Gothic Art and compared with artists like Rirkrit Tiravanija, Gillian Wearing, and Pierre Huyghe. Using various media formats, the collaborative nature of his practice is paramount as each participant unwittingly contributes his or her own texture to the work.

The Hunt (1992), a performance video piece, is one of the artists earliest works. For one week the artist visited supermarkets and rather than select his goods as customary, he‘ hunted down’ his groceries, shooting each item with a children’s bow and arrow, accompanied by a friend with a video camera. For the 23-minute video Lycan Theorized (2006), Jankowski persuaded the cast and crew working in an actual straight-to-DVD werewolf movie (in which he had a bit part) to re-enact some of its most violent scenes while quoting the writings of various film theorists. The film Casting Jesus (2011) focuses on an audition to select an actor that best interprets the role of Jesus, judged by a jury of Vatican members.

Jankowski has also created a number of television interventions. His video installation Telemistica was included in the 1999 Venice Biennale, and shows five Italian television fortune-tellers responding to a phoned-in question about the artist's success or failure at the upcoming Biennale.The Holy Artwork (2001) is a collaboration with a televangelist pastor from Texas. In Discourse News, Senior Business Anchor Annika Pergament reports on Jankowski's definition of art from her newscaster’s desk at NY1.

Jankowski's installation Strip the Auctioneer (2009) consists of sculpture, photographs and a video connected to a live auction that was orchestrated by the artist in May 2009. The action takes place at Christie's auction house in Amsterdam and incorporates the auctioneer, Amo Verkade, as the desired possession. Verkade bids his garment piece by piece down to his hammer. He strips himself of his suit, baring and transforming those parcels of clothing into objects of desire.

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