Simon uses an early 18th century mnemonic system invented by a Polish scholar Antoni Jazwinski and later popularised as “The Polish System” as a starting point. The logic of the system is used to encode major events from the history of Comecon — the Cold War era socialist economic organisation and common market. The second tool the artist uses to analyse this geopolitical alliance is modern visual communication strategies. In his work, Simon combines the findings of his own research—spanning the fields of political history and economics—with an analysis of systems used to encode and communicate knowledge, as well as contemporary open-source technologies such as 3D printing. Paradoxically, this narrative of grand modernisation projects has been reworked here in a subjective and artisanal manner, as a three-dimensional, hand-assembled and glued mosaic, in which echoes of modern public art from the Soviet era resonate.
Working on these pieces — says Simon — gave me a chance to get familiar with the key events and organisations involved in the history of the council and reassured that most of the writing on the subject is highly ideologised. At least two questions remain not answered properly — why did it eventually fail and to what extent it was a tool of Soviet / Russian imperialism designed to extract value from the smaller countries.
Janek Simon, Rise and Fall of Comecon, 2026, 3d-print, plexi, steel, (3x) 180 x 90 x 8, €26 000 + VAT
