Łukasz Jastrubczak

Flaga w kosmosie / A Flag in Space, 2015

object

square in front of the Duty Free Zone

The work A Flag in Space has been generated by the artist’s series of collages. These consist of compositions on black cardboard covered with intuitively spaced geometric figures made of multi‑coloured paper. The form of the Flags is reminiscent of early avant‑garde geometric compositions – suprematist and constructivist. In those opposites of uniqueness and seriality of a work of art, individuality and mass reception, the artist seeks an analogy to the contemporary, global relationships between economic and social structures – which determines both how the geometric shapes and colours are organised within the composition and how the Flags have been made and distributed. They have been made to order from cheap materials and in a semi‑mass produced way in a Chinese factory that produces flags for all the countries of the world. Subsequently, one of the 20 flags was placed within the duty-free zone in Nowy Port. The Flags are objects with an indeterminate status. On the one hand, one of the twenty flags has been elevated on a mast; on the other – it is one of twenty items, trashy copies of the original composition that does have the full aesthetic attributes of a work of art. Its market value has been diminished. The selection of colours used in the composition of the flag is dependent on how often a given colour appears, statistically, in the gamut of colours on all the flags of the world. Individual figures overlap and support each other. If we were to remove any one element, the rest would probably fall apart.

Łukasz Jastrubczak (b. 1984) – lives and works in Krakow. In 2009 he graduated with distinction from the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice. Together with Krzysztof Kaczmarek, he is part of the artistic group Krzysztofjastrubczakłukaszkaczmarek. Jointly with Sebastian Cichocki he is the author of the publication Miraż. He plays the synthetiser in the group Boring Drug. Since 2012, he has been co-ordinating the activities of the Times New Arial Museum. He works closely with Dawid Radziszewski Gallery. Awarded at the Views 2013 art competition of Deutsche Bank and Zachęta the