Janek Simon is a multimedia artist. He is telling us about his scholarship in the USA and about his exhibition in the Atlas of Art Gallery in Lodz. You can see his works in the section "Presentations".

This year you spent some time in the USA as a scholarship holder, you came back quite recently, tell us what this visit meant to you as an artist?

I stayed in San Francisco for nearly three months, in the artists’ residential centre  – Headlands. The benefit is, in the first place, the contact with very interesting people; in the centre I met artists of different specialities – writers, dancers, visual artists - of very varied backgrounds and stories to tell. So this is the main benefit. Besides, of course the possibility to work in perfect conditions as well as professional contacts and the opportunity to get acquainted with the artistic scene of California.

And as a tourist?

I had been to San Francisco before, so it wasn’t a novelty to me, but I visited a few new and strange places in Northern California. This is a land full of surfers, ageing hippies, e-millionaires, organic food and a belief that good ideas can change the world. I also lived in the Marin Headlands National Park which is a beautiful place situated at the entrance to the bay on the other side of the Golden Gate bridge. This is a place where, among other things, mountain biking was born.


How do Polish artists come out compared to American artists? Do we have anything in common? Are we somehow different?

The artistic scene of San Francisco, compared to say Los Angeles or New York, is quite small, and after the dot-com boom in the 1990s the prices of real estate are exorbitant so many artists had to move homes. I think that the trend most characteristic of SF is Mission School – painting inspired by graffiti and psychedelia. So this is something completely different than the Polish scene saturated with conceptualism.

Would you like to work in the USA? Or in Poland after all?

I prefer Europe, I guess, and if I were to leave Poland, which is quite possible in the future, I would chose Berlin or London. It’s OK in the States, but somehow it doesn’t meet my expectations fully.

Soon you are going to have an exhibition in Atlas of Art in Łódź/Poland. Tell us about it.

The exhibition in Atlas is the outcome of my stay in Madagascar this spring. I went there with the mission to organize an exhibition of Polish art, not knowing a soul there, without reading guide-books, etc. My mission proved successful, and at the exhibition you will see the documentation of the expedition enriched with various archive materials concerning Polish links with that place, I mean Beniowski and our colonisation plans in the 1930s.


Where do you get? Inspiration from?

From life, first of all.

Do you feel an avant-garde artist?

After the experience of modernism I don’t know if anyone can say about themselves that they are avant-garde artists, so I certainly don’t. Whereas in my works I refer to some trends of the second avant-garde – to conceptualism, in the first place, and those artists’ way of thinking is somehow close to me.


What does “avant-garde” mean to you?

There is certainly too little space here to answer this question fully, without simplifications. Anyway, avant-garde was some intellectual movement at the beginning of the 20th century that revived in the 1960s and 1970s.

What does artistic activity look like nowadays? I have recently heard an expression: “There is nothing new under the sun” – what’s your opinion?

This is a simplification again. Each good and mature artist tells his individual stories so we can expect many centuries of fresh and interesting art. If I could refer this expression to something, it would rather be purely formal search – it is really hard to find something new in this field.


You said you could earn a living from your artistic activity – what is it like? How can one buy your works?

I can earn a living from my artistic activity, which is very fortunate and is, generally, a consequence of various coincidences. I have sold some works to public collections in Poland, and I sometimes get some scholarships and fees for participation in exhibitions. All that is very uncertain though, and I am aware of the fact that it can be over very soon. Some of my works can be bought from Warsaw gallery Raster.

Do you think you are successful? What does a success mean to an artist?

I don’t think in such categories. I am happy because I can realise my ideas and I still find people who want to look at them. So this is certainly some kind of success. However, I am aware that there is still a long way ahead of me as far as artistic development and search for confidence are concerned.

Thank you.