Janek Simon was invited by an experimental art residency program Super Deals for a one-month-long stay in Brussels that ended with his “Brussels Research Yoga” show presented in a space run by Super Deals in the Saint-Gilles district. Two of his new works have forms of visualizations based on statistical data, which is a motif often used by the artist. This time, more or less random data collected by Simon became the topic of his artistic analysis—Winston Eusores’ travels reconstructed based on his passport found on the streets of Saint-Gilles; the total number of cars and pedestrians on Chausse de Waterloo on a Thursday afternoon; the impact that consuming chromium, zinc and fish oil has on the artist’s mood. As the result of superimposing those data sets on each other, Simon has created a carefully-studied and meticulously-constructed abstract sculpture. This parascientific research leads to connecting microhistories with a cosmic order of lines and colors; but at the same time it shows how human mind and imagination are absurdly driven towards the deceptive need of putting reality “in order”.
