Photo series of 83 C-Prints, mounted on paper, titled and signed, each 25 x 30 cm

2012

Jankowski invited art journalists and critics from different parts of the world to write a hand-written review on the artwork he would eventually make with their reviews. After finishing with their texts, they were asked to place these inside an empty bottle of their choice and deliver them to the artist’s studio. The series of photographs titled Review – Waterproof Test documents the bottles on a journey down New York’s East River, which enters the Atlantic Ocean. But the bottles will never reach the open water. Jankowski placed them in the river only briefly to test their water resistance. The somewhat anachronistic messages in a bottle – with their sealed, secret contents intended for an unknown recipient – were allowed to bob up and down in the waves. In the end, Jankowski fished them all out: they passed the test. Each of the photographs depicts a single, floating bottle framed in close-up; nothing is shown beyond the bounds of the water. The only points of reference are handwritten on thephotograph’s matte: the name of the critic who wrote the review and the name of the publication that he or she most often writes for.