Aluminum foil when used in common household practice, frequently covers the tops of, and, is tightly wrapped around containers of leftover food. Aluminum foil thus transforms such containers into usually overlooked inexpensive mirrors, mirrors that serve as preservation tools.
The art installation by Piotr Janowski, titled “Zabkowska 9, Take Off,” is also a leftover, a leftover of Warsaw Architecture from 1870’s, and stunningly preserved in aluminum foil.
About The Installation
The Praga-North district of Warsaw (Poland) has this 1870’s tenement home literally gift wrapped in the aluminum foil artistic vision of Piotr Janowski.
Made happen with the help of the homeless guy who found in this abandoned building a home, This architectural art installation called “Take Off”, has seemingly aged gracefully only because of its recent surreal inability to “take off” its beautifully bizarre tight silvery skin. Every old window pane, crack, flaw, and crumbling brick, has become part of a most peculiar textured and reflective surface.
The aluminum foil encased structure is attached to a larger white building much taller with many windows, and at a glance the silver building appears to be above a cafe of sorts due to lemon yellow umbrellas flowering out above sidewalk tables.
The aluminum foil building is a flowing silvery mindscape that turns light into dimensions upon dimensions. In summary it can best be described by the artist himself in a poignant quote, “I believe that my aluminum installation will for a moment turn into a symbolic silver bridge, which will combine the dreams of the pre-war past and then the dramatic years of the city’s inhabitants during the occupation with the contemporary positive change……”.
About The Artist
Artist Piotr Janowski,(b Lodz, Poland 1962), was a student at several schools devoted to the arts. First he was enrolled at the High School Of Fine Arts, then he pursued art at the Academy Of Fine Arts In Lodz, Poland. In Chicago, he attended and graduated from the School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago.
Piotr Janowski has had many exhibitions in different parts of the world including, Stawski Gallery, Krakow; Palace Of The Arts, also Krakow, Poland; The Polish Museum Of America, Chicago; not to mention his 2 aluminum foil art installations in Florida, and Łódź which we covered here.
