CHRIS DOBROWOLSKI
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      • "Stop me and buy one!"
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      • The Contemporary Art Scene
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      • "Untitled" hanging itself
      • Buy My Fucking Painting!
      • Absolut Ship !
      • Executive Toy!
      • Art Stunt Suicide Disaster
      • Roll up, Roll up. Get your Art here!
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      • My Shitty Studio No.2
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      • Untitled 240 Volts
      • On the way to the beach party
      • Toy Me No.2
      • It's for you
    • Sweet Jars, glass cases on books >
      • Thatcher
      • The council estate is coming
      • Attack drone and books
      • Muck Spreader
      • Trojan Horse
      • Security Camera
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      • Contemporary art- its the law!
      • Tank Caravans Paint Brush
      • Buy to Let
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      • Red Sports Car, East To West
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      • Matchbox
      • Instant Gratification
    • Badgast Residency >
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      • De Wrede Zee
      • Fish
      • Chips
      • Windmill
      • Panorama Mesdag
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      • & Model
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 Reviews

"Reviewing my reviews" 

In a show about 'marketing', 'selling out', 'duplicitious thinkng' and generally 'holding a mirror to the art world', it felt slightly odd to have the exhibtion reviewed by the art press. At the time, just before the internet really took over, glossy art magazines felt like important 'gate keepers' to an exclusive club of successful artists. One of the curators at Studio 1:1 gallery was Flora Fairbairn who was very well connected. She did a lot to promote this show and it even found its way into Modern Painters magazine and 'Contemporary', an art publication that has since ceased trading.  There's also a review here from 'The Big issue' under a title I quite liked called  'Product Placement'.     

​
Picture
Picture
Photo: Jo Newman
MODERN PAINTERS -Sally O'Reilly
24 FEBRUARY - 26 MARCH  2006

Automata, being of a mechanical era totally displaced by technological progress, are now more romantic than defunct. Function doesn't come into it any more. Chris Dobrowolski's moving objects compound this romanticism through their equally unmodish
cultural references, from pre-Internet mercantile entrepreneurship to old-school warfare before widespread terrorism and viral contamination.

Dobrowolski has employed old wooden boxes as containers for painted landscapes typical of eastern England: flat scrubby grass and bright skies that threaten weather change with every cloud. These pastoral scenes provide a backdrop for stilted arrangements of toys - trucks, figures, shops and planes - playthings that represent the tethers and tensions of adult life. The gallery is full of these microcosmic tableaux: some small and wall-mounted, others freestanding and sculptural; and one follows the perimeter of both gallery spaces on a raised Scalextric track. Sometimes the wooden boxes are augmented with gramophones, which provide a secondary space, kinetic motor and audio source combined. In Stop Me and Buy One (if you can) (2005) a toy van pootles around a track, passing through hinged doors from box to gramophone, round and round. In the foreground, a toy policeman and an
ice-cream van seem to stand by as if waiting to oversee and provide for the big event, while the tune 'Greensleeves' satirically and unremittingly fixes the pastoral scene. The pervasive obsolescence is funny, yet the humour is tinged with cynicism, as if the artist knows just how divisively charming the obsolete is.   

The evolution of technology - from experimental to ubiquitous to embarrassingly outdated to antique is at once useful and problematic for an artwork. When intercepting this evolution, the timing is crucial. The seductive quality of Super 8 stock, for instance, often overwhelms its critical potential, while the use of an out-of-date video game might seem more edgy somehow. There is another facet to Dobrowolski's work, though, which implies that he is aware of the exploitation of nostalgia and employs it reflexively. Many of his scenarios involve some form of hard sell. One hilarious piece comprises a landscape in a box, a truck loaded up with a Bakelite hearing aid the size of an old telephone receiver and a toy shop made of card. The voice of a tiny but persistent hawker transmits through the earpiece, shouting 'buy my paintings' over and over, while the lights in the shop window pulse in rhythm to his cries. The overt nature of older forms of marketing, which seem so blunt and untargeted compared to current self-referential and viral advertising, seem ludicrous but not altogether impossible in the relatively crude machinations of the art market.                                        
Picture
Contemporary-Richard Dyer
Issue 81  2006 

​In March Chris Dobrowolski showed at Studio 1.1. His junk  shop mechanical theatre tableaux seemed light­ hearted enough at first, but there is always a disturbing under-current of slightly manic intent. Toys, record players and train sets bring to life a strange half-world of deranged artists peddling their works at an art market disguised as a car boot sale. The work literally screams at the viewer 'Buy Me!'  So much art these days does do this that it is quite refreshing to have it all out in the open.
Picture
Picture
Photo: Jo Newman
The Big Issue - Helen Sumpter
March 13-19  2006
​
PRODUCT PLACEMENT 
There's a certain nostalgic whimsy about the idea of automata, and an element of nostalgia is cer­tainly present in this series of automata-Iike installations.

Constructed within rough wooden boxes and old record players, Chris Dobrowolski 's tableaux are con­ structed using dolls-house-size, battered old toy cars, trucks and figures. At the push of a button they 're activated into life  with sounds and crude movements that, coupled with their worn appear­ance, suggest that they might date to a much earlier decade. In place of whimsy, Dobrowolski injects a dollop of humour by making the subject of many of his installations the marketing and selling of art, as if it were just another product you might find in a shop or on a market stall . An arrangement of old toy lor­ries and tables are set out Iike a car boot sale with art-related goods that include plastic dustbins full of paint for £10. Press the human­ sized doorbell on the back of one of the lorries and from a tinny speaker a crackly male voice repeats the boot sale traders' patter of "don't make me take it all back home with me". In another example a lorry sits on a slightly larger version of itself, surrounded by bunting. This time the refrain from the speaker is an emphatic "Buy my painting''.

In another work, opening the lid to a wooden box activates a toy ice­ cream van that trundles around a cracked and broken vinyl single playing the common ice-cream van tune of Greensleeves on an old mono record player. As another attempt at self-promotion, the toy figure inside a second ice cream isn't flogging ices, but art.
Studio 1.1, 57a Redchurch Street, London E2 

​Click this button for 'Offer Must End Soon' Page 
Offer Must End Soon
  • Home
  • in the art gallery
    • Transit Transition >
      • Train Wave
      • The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
      • Self Evaluation
      • something About Global Capitalism But Less Ernest
      • The Man From Human Resources Is Coming to See You
      • The Ofsted Inspection
      • The Risk Assessment
      • Personal development training day
      • My Matchbox Toy Lorry
      • The Zero Hours Contract
      • The Plinth
    • Remnants Of Utopia >
      • Austerity Miniature Mayday Parade
      • The Contract
      • Agitprop/anti-agitprop Train
      • Siberia
      • How We Won The War
      • Revolutionary Reminder
      • The Marketing Team
    • Antarctica >
      • Project Outline
      • Antarctica Essay
      • Reviews
      • Sledge
      • Toy Sledge
      • Airfix Antarctic Aeroplane Hoover
      • Eating Penguins
      • The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
      • Toy Snowmobile
      • Rat Box, Bird Island
      • Rejection Letters
      • The Last Roll Of Kodachrome In The World
      • John Deere Gator And Specimen
      • There Are No More Dogs In Antarctica
      • Furthest South- J C B
      • Captain Scotts Bookshelf
      • Antarctic Toy Portraits
    • Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape , Escape >
      • Seascape Escape (No.1)
      • Landscape Escape (No.1)
      • Seascape Escape (No.2)
      • Timescape Escape
      • Landscape Escape (No.2) >
        • Sketches for Tank
      • Skyscape Escape
      • Essay/ Catalogue >
        • Introduction
        • Seascape Escape
        • Landscape Escape No. 1
        • Seascape Escape No.2
        • Landscape Escape No.2
        • Skyscape Escape
        • Timescape Escape
        • End-Piece
      • Reviews and Press
    • Offer Must End Soon >
      • Essay Jess Twyman
      • Reviews
      • Offer Must End Soon
      • Buy My Painting!
      • "Buy My Painting!" For the hard of hearing.
      • "Don't Make Me Take It All Back Home With Me!"
      • How We Won The War
      • "Stop me and buy one!"
      • 'The Cornfield'... free gift inside
      • "Catalogue!"
      • The Contemporary Art Scene
      • Camera Crash
      • "Untitled" hanging itself
      • Buy My Fucking Painting!
      • Absolut Ship !
      • Executive Toy!
      • Art Stunt Suicide Disaster
      • Roll up, Roll up. Get your Art here!
    • Big Country >
      • Big Country
      • The box you stick your head into
      • Europa, Hoek van Holland to Vladivostok
      • Caravans
      • magazine article
    • All at Sea
    • & Model >
      • Reviews
    • Give Me The Money
    • Music and domestic appliances >
      • Sketch for aeroplane
      • The Plinth
      • Cold War Monument
      • Wagon Wheels
      • Vacuum Cleaner Circle
    • ...on the wall...in boxes >
      • My Shitty Studio No.2
      • Sketch for aeroplane No.6
      • Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape, Fire Escape
      • My horrible studio No.1
      • Untitled 240 Volts
      • On the way to the beach party
      • Toy Me No.2
      • It's for you
    • Sweet Jars, glass cases on books >
      • Thatcher
      • The council estate is coming
      • Attack drone and books
      • Muck Spreader
      • Trojan Horse
      • Security Camera
      • Move
      • Epsom Printer, Tank, God
      • Contemporary art- its the law!
      • Tank Caravans Paint Brush
      • Buy to Let
      • Section 21
  • On The Stage
    • All Roads Lead To Rome >
      • Project outline
      • reviews
    • Antarctica >
      • Project Outline
      • Reviews
    • Poland 3 Iran 2 >
      • Project Outline
      • Reviews
    • Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape , Escape >
      • Project Outline
      • Reviews
      • tours and extra stuff
    • How NOT to make a living as an Artist
    • Toy Stories
  • Outside the art gallery
    • Auspicious Phoenix Recycling Palace
    • Covid lockdown with Boris >
      • Boris zip wire
      • Covidtrix
      • what is the truth but a lie agreed upon
    • Goat Train
    • washed up Car - go >
      • Project Outline
      • Reviews
      • 'EK52 UDP'
      • 'VK02 GFK'
      • 'Y194 LPP'
      • Washed Up Car-go (Hastings)
      • Washed Up Car- go (Brighton)
    • Vanishing Point >
      • Project Outline
      • Reviews
      • Red Sports Car, East To West
      • Studebaker Camera Car, Going To The Beach
      • Kite And Candy, Buick
      • Kennedy Lincoln Continental
      • Ambulance Emergency
      • Pink Mustang, at the Golden Gate Bridge
      • Matchbox
      • Instant Gratification
    • Badgast Residency >
      • Short Essay
      • De Wrede Zee
      • Fish
      • Chips
      • Windmill
      • Panorama Mesdag
    • Selfie Slot Car Racing >
      • Project Outline
      • Film by Andy Wiltshire
      • Librarian Pit Crew
      • Experiments with sound
      • Selfie Slot Car Racing at Firstsite Gallery
      • Flitwick Library
    • Coventry Transport Museum Residency >
      • Coventry Concept
      • Poetry Vending Machine
    • Cheap Cheap >
      • Review
    • A Portrait of Casper DeBoer
    • Cranes
    • Hessle Road Residency >
      • Hessle Road (continued)
    • Reisbureau Mareado >
      • Mareado (Continued)
      • City magazine review
    • Windmills >
      • Aerial, wind, sun and radio
      • Guitar Played by the Wind >
        • Winners and Losers
      • Self Portrait
      • Jesus punches banker
    • Performance Sculptures >
      • The groundsman
      • All seeing bicycle lamp
      • Pasta 4 one
      • Revolutionary Reminder
  • publications
    • Solo projects >
      • Escape >
        • Read an Extract
      • Antarctica
      • Offer Must End Soon
      • Tangents
      • Landscape, Seascape, Skyscape , Escape
      • Aerial, wind, sun and radio
    • Group Projects >
      • oceans
      • Talk to me
      • & Model
      • Middlesbrough Art Weekender
      • Translating the Street
      • 1st Sino/british Cont. Art, Yentai
      • Performance, Transport And Mobility
      • Inbetween PS1, New York and Shanghai
      • Odd Coupling
      • Landscapes of Exploration
      • Flip Shift Show Switch
      • Baudrillard Now
      • The Juddykes
      • Dr Roberts Magic Bus
      • Continental Breakfast
      • Lat (living Apart Together)
      • North. Amsterdam 2004
      • Westwijk, Vlaardingen, De Strip
      • Da Da Da Strategies Against Marketecture
      • Reisburo Mareado (The Travel Brochure)
      • Catalogus Mareado
      • Kunst Over De Grens
      • This Flat Earth
      • The Uses of an Artist
      • Kettles Yard Open 97
      • Royal College Of Art Centenary Year
      • Millennium Encyclopedia
    • Press
  • About / contact
    • Biog
    • CV >
      • Solo Exhibitions
      • Live Art
      • Residencies / Commissions
      • Group Exhibitions
      • Education
      • Career History
      • Media Coverage
    • Contact
    • are you on the right website?