{"id":5885,"date":"2022-04-15T20:38:56","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T18:38:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/?p=5885"},"modified":"2022-09-23T07:41:09","modified_gmt":"2022-09-23T05:41:09","slug":"piotr-janas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2022\/04\/15\/piotr-janas\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Is the Decayed Pink"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Solo exhibition of works by Piotr Janas<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On view: April 21-June 4
Opening reception: Thursday, April 21 at 6-8:30 PM ET<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Erben Gallery
526 W 26th St
New York, NY 10001<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thomas Erben Gallery is pleased to present Piotr Janas<\/strong>\u2019 (b. 1970, Warsaw) first exhibition with the gallery, featuring paintings made between 2008 and 2020. Since emerging in the young Polish scene in the early \u201800s, Janas has become known for intense, visceral paintings that meditate on the collision between biomorphism and the formal language of modernist abstraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working in a late-surrealist mode inherited from the Polish avant-garde of the \u201860s and \u201870s, having studied under Prof. Jerzy Tch\u00f3rzewski, Janas treats the canvas as a body itself, subjecting it to a kind of physical and mental abuse that mirrors the conditions of post-industrial life. Stretched, pierced, corroded, bleeding, the \u201cfigures\u201d of Janas\u2019 paintings seem to represent the decayed remains of an earlier form of humanity, which, while no longer living, still contain the trace of a vital will.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Untitled<\/em>, 2019. Oil and lacquer on canvas, 112 x 200 cm.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The show opens with a video of the artist \u2014 stripped down to his underwear, with cigarette in hand \u2014 dancing on the back of a painting laid face-down on the studio floor. As he balances on the stretcher, bouncing across the frame striking classical ballet poses, the bars buckle, threatening to crack under Janas\u2019 weight. Like his paintings, the image contains a series of contrasts: the elegance of the music with the awkwardness of his dance; the taut canvas with his soft body; the flat grid with his movement in space. A mutual subjection takes place in which both artist and artwork must submit to the other\u2019s demands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn the Penal Colony,\u201d Kafka\u2019s short story about an imaginary prison island, centers around an elaborate execution device that, over the course of many hours, inscribes the text of the law into the back of the accused, causing such intense pain that it induces a quasi-religious epiphany in which the condemned realizes that the law is endowed with the power of fate. But over time even this authority begins to decay, and the device falls into a state of disrepair, still executing its victims but robbing them of the mystical experience that had provided its sole rationale.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Untitled (Baroque)<\/em>, 2016. Oil and lacquer on canvas, 200 x 142 cm.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like Kafka\u2019s parable, the work of Piotr Janas is marked by an existential dread that manifests in violent fantasies and an acute sensitivity to the absurdity of modern life, especially in the rationalized morality of the state and its institutions. If the effect of Kafka was to reveal the emptiness behind the law\u2019s abstractness, Janas\u2019 paintings show us how that emptiness deforms the subject, reducing it to little more than quantities of flesh and blood. As the law becomes more and more monstrous, so, too, does Janas\u2019 figures, which, rather than sympathy, inspire an ambivalent attraction-repulsion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Piotr Janas<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

About the artist: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Piotr Janas <\/strong>lives and works in Warsaw, Poland. He debuted internationally at the 50th International Venice Biennale <\/strong>in 2003 and has been the subject of numerous institutional and gallery exhibitions, including Flesh in War with Enigma<\/em>, Kunsthalle Basel <\/strong>(2004), Infinite Painting: Contemporary Painting and Global Realism<\/em>, Villa Manin Centro d\u2019Arte Contemporanea <\/strong>(2006), Polish Painting of the 21st Century<\/em>, Zacheta National Gallery of Art<\/strong>, Warsaw (2006), Institute of Contemporary Arts, London <\/strong>(2012); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw <\/strong>(2014); Foksal Gallery Foundation <\/strong>(2004, 2009, 2016, 2022), Bortolami <\/strong>(2008 & 2013), Jack Hanley <\/strong>(2005), Nicolas Krupp <\/strong>(2013), Stereo <\/strong>(2018), Wschod <\/strong>(2022). Janas\u2019 works are in the collections of the Tate Modern<\/strong>, London; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo<\/strong>, Turin; National Museum in Wroclaw<\/strong>; Zacheta National Gallery of Art<\/strong>, Warsaw; and the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, and with the kind support of the Polish Cultural Institute, New York.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lead image: Glass<\/em>, 2018. Oil and lacquer on canvas, 150 x 200 cm.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Solo exhibition of works by Piotr Janas On view: April 21-June 4Opening reception: Thursday, April 21 at 6-8:30 PM ET Thomas Erben Gallery526 W 26th StNew York, NY 10001 Thomas Erben Gallery is pleased to present Piotr Janas\u2019 (b. 1970, Warsaw) first exhibition with the gallery, featuring paintings made between 2008 and 2020. Since emerging in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":5884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[291,5,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art-exhibitions","category-events","category-visual-arts"],"yoast_head":"\nBlue Is the Decayed Pink - Instytut Polski w Nowym Jorku<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2022\/04\/15\/piotr-janas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"pl_PL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blue Is the Decayed Pink - Instytut Polski w Nowym Jorku\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Solo exhibition of works by Piotr Janas On view: April 21-June 4Opening reception: Thursday, April 21 at 6-8:30 PM ET Thomas Erben Gallery526 W 26th StNew York, NY 10001 Thomas Erben Gallery is pleased to present Piotr Janas\u2019 (b. 1970, Warsaw) first exhibition with the gallery, featuring paintings made between 2008 and 2020. Since emerging in […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2022\/04\/15\/piotr-janas\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Instytut Polski w Nowym Jorku\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2022-04-15T18:38:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-09-23T05:41:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-15-at-2.26.12-PM-1024x757.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1024\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"757\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"klaudia\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Napisane przez\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"klaudia\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Szacowany czas czytania\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minut\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"event\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2022\/04\/15\/piotr-janas\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2022\/04\/15\/piotr-janas\/\",\"name\":\"Blue Is the Decayed Pink\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2022\/04\/15\/piotr-janas\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":[\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-15-at-2.26.12-PM.png\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-15-at-2.26.12-PM-300x222.png\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-15-at-2.26.12-PM-1024x757.png\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-15-at-2.26.12-PM.png\"],\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-15-at-2.26.12-PM.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2022-04-15T18:38:56+02:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-09-23T05:41:09+02:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/#\/schema\/person\/04d40cd80c1729a7f440613bee4073b6\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2022\/04\/15\/piotr-janas\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2022\/04\/15\/piotr-janas\/\"]}],\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"startDate\":\"2022-04-21\",\"endDate\":\"2022-06-04\",\"eventStatus\":\"EventScheduled\",\"eventAttendanceMode\":\"OfflineEventAttendanceMode\",\"location\":{\"@type\":\"place\",\"name\":\"\",\"address\":\"\",\"geo\":{\"@type\":\"GeoCoordinates\",\"latitude\":\"\",\"longitude\":\"\"}},\"description\":\"Solo exhibition of works by Piotr Janas\\nOn view: April 21-June 4Opening reception: Thursday, April 21 at 6-8:30 PM ET\\nThomas Erben Gallery526 W 26th StNew York, NY 10001\\nThomas Erben Gallery is pleased to present Piotr Janas\u2019 (b. 1970, Warsaw) first exhibition with the gallery, featuring paintings made between 2008 and 2020. Since emerging in the young Polish scene in the early \u201800s, Janas has become known for intense, visceral paintings that meditate on the collision between biomorphism and the formal language of modernist abstraction.\\nWorking in a late-surrealist mode inherited from the Polish avant-garde of the \u201860s and \u201870s, having studied under Prof. Jerzy Tch\u00f3rzewski, Janas treats the canvas as a body itself, subjecting it to a kind of physical and mental abuse that mirrors the conditions of post-industrial life. Stretched, pierced, corroded, bleeding, the \u201cfigures\u201d of Janas\u2019 paintings seem to represent the decayed remains of an earlier form of humanity, which, while no longer living, still contain the trace of a vital will.\\nThe show opens with a video of the artist \u2014 stripped down to his underwear, with cigarette in hand \u2014 dancing on the back of a painting laid face-down on the studio floor. 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He debuted internationally at the 50th International Venice Biennale in 2003 and has been the subject of numerous institutional and gallery exhibitions, including Flesh in War with Enigma, Kunsthalle Basel (2004), Infinite Painting: Contemporary Painting and Global Realism, Villa Manin Centro d\u2019Arte Contemporanea (2006), Polish Painting of the 21st Century, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2006), Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2012); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2014); Foksal Gallery Foundation (2004, 2009, 2016, 2022), Bortolami (2008 & 2013), Jack Hanley (2005), Nicolas Krupp (2013), Stereo (2018), Wschod (2022). Janas\u2019 works are in the collections of the Tate Modern, London; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; National Museum in Wroclaw; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; and the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.\\nThis exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, and with the kind support of the Polish Cultural Institute, New York.\\nLead image: Glass, 2018. 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Since emerging in the young Polish scene in the early \u201800s, Janas has become known for intense, visceral paintings that meditate on the collision between biomorphism and the formal language of modernist abstraction.\nWorking in a late-surrealist mode inherited from the Polish avant-garde of the \u201860s and \u201870s, having studied under Prof. Jerzy Tch\u00f3rzewski, Janas treats the canvas as a body itself, subjecting it to a kind of physical and mental abuse that mirrors the conditions of post-industrial life. Stretched, pierced, corroded, bleeding, the \u201cfigures\u201d of Janas\u2019 paintings seem to represent the decayed remains of an earlier form of humanity, which, while no longer living, still contain the trace of a vital will.\nThe show opens with a video of the artist \u2014 stripped down to his underwear, with cigarette in hand \u2014 dancing on the back of a painting laid face-down on the studio floor. As he balances on the stretcher, bouncing across the frame striking classical ballet poses, the bars buckle, threatening to crack under Janas\u2019 weight. Like his paintings, the image contains a series of contrasts: the elegance of the music with the awkwardness of his dance; the taut canvas with his soft body; the flat grid with his movement in space. A mutual subjection takes place in which both artist and artwork must submit to the other\u2019s demands.\n\u201cIn the Penal Colony,\u201d Kafka\u2019s short story about an imaginary prison island, centers around an elaborate execution device that, over the course of many hours, inscribes the text of the law into the back of the accused, causing such intense pain that it induces a quasi-religious epiphany in which the condemned realizes that the law is endowed with the power of fate. But over time even this authority begins to decay, and the device falls into a state of disrepair, still executing its victims but robbing them of the mystical experience that had provided its sole rationale.\nLike Kafka\u2019s parable, the work of Piotr Janas is marked by an existential dread that manifests in violent fantasies and an acute sensitivity to the absurdity of modern life, especially in the rationalized morality of the state and its institutions. If the effect of Kafka was to reveal the emptiness behind the law\u2019s abstractness, Janas\u2019 paintings show us how that emptiness deforms the subject, reducing it to little more than quantities of flesh and blood. As the law becomes more and more monstrous, so, too, does Janas\u2019 figures, which, rather than sympathy, inspire an ambivalent attraction-repulsion.\nAbout the artist: \nPiotr Janas lives and works in Warsaw, Poland. He debuted internationally at the 50th International Venice Biennale in 2003 and has been the subject of numerous institutional and gallery exhibitions, including Flesh in War with Enigma, Kunsthalle Basel (2004), Infinite Painting: Contemporary Painting and Global Realism, Villa Manin Centro d\u2019Arte Contemporanea (2006), Polish Painting of the 21st Century, Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (2006), Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (2012); Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw (2014); Foksal Gallery Foundation (2004, 2009, 2016, 2022), Bortolami (2008 & 2013), Jack Hanley (2005), Nicolas Krupp (2013), Stereo (2018), Wschod (2022). Janas\u2019 works are in the collections of the Tate Modern, London; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin; National Museum in Wroclaw; Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; and the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.\nThis exhibition was organized in collaboration with the Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, and with the kind support of the Polish Cultural Institute, New York.\nLead image: Glass, 2018. Oil and lacquer on canvas, 150 x 200 cm."},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"pl-PL","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2022\/04\/15\/piotr-janas\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-15-at-2.26.12-PM.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2022\/04\/Screen-Shot-2022-04-15-at-2.26.12-PM.png","width":2050,"height":1516},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/2022\/04\/15\/piotr-janas\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Blue Is the Decayed Pink"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/#website","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/","name":"Instytut Polski w Nowym Jorku","description":"Instytuty Polskie","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"pl-PL"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/#\/schema\/person\/04d40cd80c1729a7f440613bee4073b6","name":"klaudia","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"pl-PL","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/649cd2d4f6b3f48c5bf42d51f7e665fb?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/649cd2d4f6b3f48c5bf42d51f7e665fb?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"klaudia"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/lukasz.sienkiewicz@msz.gov.pl"],"url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/author\/stypulkowskaa\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5885"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6151,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5885\/revisions\/6151"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/newyork\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}