Honza Zamojski

Middleman

10. 3.–28. 5. 2023

Grad Tivoli

The work of Polish artist Honza Zamojski attracted a lot of attention at the 33rd Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts and received the special Audience Award. This time, he is preparing a site-specific installation and artist's book for the exhibition space at MGLC.

In Honza Zamojski's latest exhibition, the eponymous Middleman plays various roles. He is a viewer who, upon entering the exhibition space, stands in the middle of the symmetrical architecture. He is also an author who mediates between the world of ideas and the material world by creating drawings, sculptures and texts. Middleman is also visualised as a simplified and symbolic puppet that can be moved by various forces.

Essentially a site-specific installation, the exhibition takes place not only within the symmetry of architecture, but often in relation to the symmetry (or asymmetry) of a sheet of paper, a word and a human figure. An attentive viewer will notice that the further one moves away from the centre of the exhibition, the brighter it is and the more there is to see. You could even say that the narrative explodes, and what tries to put it back together again is Middleman holding the collapsing world with all his might.

Honza Zamojski (1981, Poznań) is an artist, designer, book publisher and curator who draws upon a broad range of media and artistic practice, from drawings and sculptures to infographics inspired by corporate communications and poetic word games. His minimalist forms are loaded with meaningful symbols, abstract compositions and figurative representations that make up a visual language governed by its own grammatical rules and formal structure. Elements that may appear disparate at first are united through their simplicity of form, punctuated by a sense of humour and irony. Honza Zamojski has authored more than a dozen books (including Love Letter, onestar press, 2017; Four Eggs Theory, self-published, 2015; Fishing with John, NERO, 2013).

He has also presented his original lecture series on 'How It's Made' at the Centre Pompidou, MoMA Library and Printed Matter New York. His work has been seen in Ljubljana in the main exhibition of the 33rd Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts Crack Up – Crack Down in 2019, as part of which he presented his installation The Gathering and The Meeting at DUM Project Space. He received the Audience Award for his installation. He lives and works in Poznań, Poland.

To accompany the exhibition, NERO's publishing experimentation entitled Can it be tried somewhere? will also be shown.

NERO is a quarterly magazine and publishing house specialising in artists' books, editions and catalogues that respond to the spontaneous need to connect to a broader cultural discourse and use art to explore the imaginaries of the world to come and the relevant issues of the present.

Middleman, the latest book by Honza Zamojski, which is an illustrative and poetic attempt to describe the Middleman, his everyday life and the reality that surrounds him, will be published by Nero Editions in May.