CHRISTIAN JANKOWSKI
(Germany, 1968)


Point of sale, 2002
DVD, 14:17 min.
Maccarone Inc., New York, NY
Courtesy Klosterfelde, Berlin

In the video Point of Sale a threefold screen shows three professionals talking about business from different perspectives. As frequently in his work, Christian Jankowski explores the economic principles of the art market – in this case by juxtaposing a gallery-owner selling art and a retailer selling electronics who reversed their roles, each reporting on the business strategies, financial goals and client structures of the other one. As a third neutral party, a business consultant comments on the rules of successful business. By presenting simultaneously these three perspectives on how to do business, the boundaries between the art of business and the business of art seem to get blurred. Point of Sale leaves the viewer with the ambivalent feeling that art is not handled very differently from any other industrially produced consumer good.





Kunstmarkt TV, 2008
DVD, 45 min.
Courtesy Klosterfelde, Berlino



What is it that makes art famous and expensive? In his video Kunstmarkt TV Jankowski answers these questions by simulating a telemarketing show. He invited a professional TV-salesman and his attractive assistant to enact a TV-sale with art objects from contemporary stars such as Vanessa Beecroft, Liam Gillick or Jeff Koons, explaining what makes each single object important, what justifies its price, and why one should buy it. In transferring the blatant way in which cheap jewellery or electric blankets are advertised to a TV-audience, the artist creates a proximity of contexts which the viewer might perceive as a critical and humorous comment on the current art market.







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