A.R.M. DAMA Award – Honza Zamojski

This year A.R.M. partnered with DAMA to award one of participating artists with a featured interview on Art Research Map.
Honza Zamojski is this year’s winner. Zamosjki (b.1981) is represented by Leto (Warsaw) and has prepared a site-specific installation titled ‘Ghostism’:

‘Ghostism’

“The so called spiritual matters are usually contrasted with and opposed to materiality. Spirituality, as commonly understood, is a level above mundane affairs on the metaphorical ladder of human needs. Bodily needs – such as the need to satisfy hunger or feel secure – are placed below the needs of the soul (if such a thing exists at all), whether in the religious aspect (God) or the rational one (Beauty/Reason). Well-developed spirituality is supposed to serve as a ‘safety valve’ protecting the average homo sapiens from the fear of death.

In the context of spirituality so construed, ghostism would be its negative reflection, something that burdens the mind and hinders action. The striving towards the ‘absolute’ (whether divine or rational) would be limited to making constant references to the past that is but a collection of facts recorded in various media and their mental interpretations. Ghostism is for the mind what concrete shoes are for the drowning man who sees the water surface but is unable to swim up. Ghostism stands in a row with all its –ism ancestors, becoming its own caricature and ineptly imitating their achievements, calling this reinterpretation or inspiration.

The proposed project builds on the major themes in the “Ghostism” show at the Osmos gallery in New York (November 2016 / January 2017). However, the new project narrows the scope of iconographic representation to photographs and curtains, creating a foundation based upon opposites, rather than a carefully prescribed composition. On the one hand, we have the raw architecture of small magnetic sculptures depicted as oversized images, and on the other, as semi-transparent, flowing, “disembodied” curtains / ghosts.

Series of photographs along with several curtains – which altogether make up a composition that is predominantly random. Some images hung on the wall, while others placed on the floor, or propped against the wall. The premise is to create a situation in which the viewer is set “in the midst” of a composition that is lacking any explicit boundaries.”

Honza Zamojski 

b.1981, lives and works in Poznan. Artist, designer, book publisher and also a curator who incorporates a wide array of media – from illustration, through sculptural drawings to infographics taken from the corporate world, and poetry as well. This mixed bag reflects perfectly the wide spectrum of his interests, rooted in a fundamentally utopian desire to order and understand the universe all around. Honza Zamojski creates narratives which, when considered from afar, build a universal, multilayered world based on a philosophy of agnosticism and the energy of the perpetuum mobile. Minimalist in form, rich in symbolism, his abstract compositions and figurative representations come together as a visual language that is governed by its own grammatical structure and format. What welds together some of these seemingly divergent elements is a sense of humor about the world and his own place within it. Zamojski is the author of over a dozen books and the recipient of grants from the Polish Ministry of Culture and the Visegrad Fund. His work has been shown at solo and group shows in Poland and abroad, including the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Foksal Gallery, Morsbroich Museum and the Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York. He’s presented his lecture on self-publishing, titled “How it’s Made”, at the Centre Pompidou, MoMA Library and Printed Matter New York.