Hervorragend – Visitors

“Hervorragend,” “Immer weiter so,” “Merci” – every kind of comment or simply a name, quickly scribbled in ballpoint pen, poetically original notes, confessions, long rambling letters, praise or criticism: together they paint a picture of visitors’ feelings and thoughts. Not only on social media are people, activities, and achievements rated—the same happens in guestbooks at museums, hotels, and restaurants. The guestbook is both an intimate and a public space, in which the present becomes memory at the very moment of writing. In written dialogue with an unknown counterpart, visitors find individual expression for their experiences—for the inspiration and entertainment of the readers who follow.

Since 2010, Christian Jankowski has been reproducing selected sentences along with accompanying comic-like drawings from the guestbooks of renowned art institutions and galleries. Visitors is an ongoing series of neon light installations that takes up both appreciative and critical remarks about an exhibition, an institution, or a work. The author, the exhibition, and the institution remain unknown in each piece. Contrary to aesthetic conventions and prevailing notions of authorship, Jankowski withdraws as the artist-genius and cedes authorship to the visitors. As in many of his works, the inclusion of the audience is an essential part of his practice. His questions about representation often have a playful character. Nonetheless, Jankowski always operates between value critique, the illumination of production mechanisms, and interpretive authority within and outside the art world. Central always remains the question of the image itself. What is art? Who is its creator? And who its consumer?