Concept

-2008-

These days, 60% of all hand-painted reproductions of famous oil paintings come from the small Chinese village of Dafen. Around 10,000 Chinese copyists turn out landscapes, portraits, and still lifes, for a global market. From Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss, every icon of art history is available for purchase – at prices costing as little five euros, depending on the size and quality. In 2007, while visiting Dafen and the construction site of a museum built by the communist party to »promote the arts« in China, Jankowski was surprised to learn that the architects weren’t told what type of art would be shown in the museum. He then decided to photograph the future exhibition spaces – the walls still empty – and commission various painters to copy them. Each painter was also asked to fill in the empty wall depicted with a painting of his or her choice, as if he or she were the future museum director. The copyists were thus transformed into authors, each with individual tastes, interests, and convictions – whose artistic approaches ranged from propaganda and social critique to crowd-pleasing and self-promotion. Three years later the project achieved a certain wish fulfilment as the paintings were exhibited in Dafen Art Museum.

Paintings