{"id":10936,"date":"2012-02-06T01:55:54","date_gmt":"2012-02-06T01:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=10936"},"modified":"2024-04-09T13:20:06","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T12:20:06","slug":"jarek-piotrowskis-soft-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/02\/06\/jarek-piotrowskis-soft-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Jarek Piotrowski&#8217;s Soft Machine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.galerie8.co.uk\/cat\/exhibitions\/exhibitions\/jarek-piotrowski-soft-machine-18-january-11-march-2011\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/piotrowski1.jpg\" alt=\"piotrowski1.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Jarek Piotrowski is a Polish-born Canadian artist whose exhibition of hand-cut PVC mats at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.galerie8.co.uk\/cat\/exhibitions\/exhibitions\/jarek-piotrowski-soft-machine-18-january-11-march-2011\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Galerie8<\/a>, London, borrows a title and inspiration from William Burroughs&#8217; <em>The Soft Machine<\/em>. From the usual slab of gallery-speak:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Drawing on the subversive William S. Burroughs novel <em>The Soft Machine<\/em> (1961), Piotrowski\u2019s work explores themes of the human body under siege, repetitive rituals and institutions of control. Through an immersive installation of paintings, cut-outs, experimental music and live performance, structure and order are broken down and unanswered fundamental questions of human nature confronted.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These creations no doubt look better in situ than in photos. The close-up below makes me think of Brion Gysin&#8217;s meshed calligraphy and the slots in his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dreamachine.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dreamachines<\/a>. Piotrowski talked to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/artsandculture\/article\/12369\/1\/jarek-piotrowski-soft-machine\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dazed Digital<\/a> about the Burroughs influence:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I don\u2019t necessarily have a favourite part of the book, I like it as a gesture in itself completely rather than a particular part. I think of it more as an entity, but I do particularly like the phrase, \u2018two assholes and a mandrake\u2019 \u2013 it is a beautiful picture that I find quite intriguing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><em>Soft Machine<\/em> runs to March 11th, 2012.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.galerie8.co.uk\/cat\/exhibitions\/exhibitions\/jarek-piotrowski-soft-machine-18-january-11-march-2011\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/piotrowski2.jpg\" alt=\"piotrowski2.jpg\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere on { feuilleton }<br \/>\n\u2022 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/themed-archive-pages\/the-william-burroughs-archive\/\">The William Burroughs archive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jarek Piotrowski is a Polish-born Canadian artist whose exhibition of hand-cut PVC mats at Galerie8, London, borrows a title and inspiration from William Burroughs&#8217; The Soft Machine. From the usual slab of gallery-speak: Drawing on the subversive William S. Burroughs novel The Soft Machine (1961), Piotrowski\u2019s work explores themes of the human body under siege, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2012\/02\/06\/jarek-piotrowskis-soft-machine\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Jarek Piotrowski&#8217;s Soft Machine&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,28],"tags":[968,266,3330,3633,2501,1190],"class_list":["post-10936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-burroughs","tag-brion-gysin","tag-calligraphy","tag-jarek-piotrowski","tag-soft-machine","tag-the-soft-machine","tag-william-burroughs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-2Qo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10936\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}