From next June 1st until October 1st 2017, the project room of the MAN Museum will host the exhibition Nosepads , the Polish artist’s first solo exhibition in an Italian museum Jakub Julian Ziolkowski, edited by Lorenzo Giusti, with the collaboration of Rowena Chiu.

Ziolkowski is mainly known for his surreal paintings, populated by fantastic and often disturbing creatures. A “pictorial organicism” nourished by heterogeneous references, in which Western and Eastern traditions mix, dialoguing with the history of the artistic avant-garde. The resulting iconographies describe states of mind, chaotic worlds in which reality and imagination blend into each other, projecting the viewer into a universe of dreams, memories, desires. Apparently dominated by chaos, Ziolkowski’s works actually contain an internal order, regulated by intertwined narrative flows.

The exhibition at the MAN, the third of an annual program which sees the museum engaged in a widespread investigation into the possible relevance of the pictorial medium, revolves around a particular type of pasta, the “Nasellini”, a non-existent format, derived from the shape of the cavity nasal, which evokes the legend of tortellini, born, according to what is said, by observing the shape of the navel.

Through paintings, sculptures and a series of short videos created during a period of residence in Sardinia, the artist will stage a surreal advertising campaign for the promotion of “Nasellini”, exploring the border between real and unreal and deconsecrated, through irony, the playful expedient and sarcasm, the collective imagination linked to pasta, one of the main identity elements of Italy. The works will be housed in an environment modified for the occasion, almost an installation site specific , evoking the atmosphere of a traditional trattoria, with colored walls and paintings and posters hung in a disorderly manner.

The videos, all shot between Nuoro and the coasts of Sardinia with non-professional actors, were made thanks to the special contribution of the Sardegna Film Commission Foundation.

Jakub Julian Ziolkowski (Zamosc, Poland, 1980), lives and works in Krakow, the city where he studied at the prestigious “Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts”. Among the most recent exhibitions: tbc , Zamosc Gallery, Zamosc, 2017; Glimpses , Fundacja Galerii Foksal, Warsaw, 2017; Neues Museum, Das Leben Selbst , Nuremberg, 2017; Sick Of Love, Café Nhà Sàn, Hanoi, Vietnam, 2016; Jakub Julian Ziolkowski. Imagorea’ , Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw, 2014; Raw Thoughts, Hauser & Wirth Zurich, Zurich, 2013; Jakub Julian Ziolkowski. Skin and Bread, Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warsaw, 2012; Jakub Julian Ziolkowski: In Utero, Parasol Unit, London, 2011; Jakub Julian Ziolkowski. Timothy Galoty & The Dead Brains, Hauser & Wirth New York, New York, 2010. Among the numerous participations in collective exhibitions: An Uncanny Likeness, Simon Lee, New York, 2017, Animality , Marian Goodman Gallery, London, 2016, State of Life’ , National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China, 2015, The Encyclopedic Palace , 55th Venice Biennale, Venice, 2013, Painting Between the Lines , CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco, 2011, The Generational: Younger Than Jesus , The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2009.