In 2016, in Hanoi's first independent exhibition space, Ziółkowski decided to touch upon the topic of love and its various forms in an exhibition entitled Sick of Love. Love was portrayed in all its glory and downsides, which the artist treated quite literally, creating vases to vomit in for those who are quite literally sick of love. But Sick of Love is not only about the negative states; in the end the feeling of falling in love overpowers our body and mind, combining extreme emotions, both the good and the bad.
Nha San Studio, in which the exhibition took place, is located in a traditional Vietnamese wooden house, and is run by an artistic collective. Currently, due to socio-political circumstances, it's not thriving in the artistic world and the pretext for its activity is the cafe inside. The works created by Ziółkowski are site-specific and entered the space of Nha San Studio smoothly.
Ceramic wasn't the only departure from previously used artistic practices. The exhibition Sick of Love featured a series of sculptures made out of paper used to create votive sculptures. In Vietnam, this material is not used in the art world, perhaps due to its poor quality; however, it is still considered ‘holy’. Ziółkowski created the sculptures in a village that specialises in working with the paper. He had to commute every day for 40 minutes by scooter.
Ziółkowski wanted to convey emotions with his sculptures, which, as we know, in love can often be volatile: obsessive thinking, constant fantasising, discovering our desires and heartache. These changes often occur in the rhythm of a kaleidoscope and it was to this understanding of love that the artist referred. The sculptures showed the impermanence and transience of feelings and the eternal emotional defeat of the narcissus, who is in love with himself. At the exhibition, you could find an aged playboy on solitary holidays, a couple in love, and even love-making shrimps. In contrast, there was also a realistic sculpture – Ziółkowski's self-portrait in an outfit meant for practicing the spiritual and mystical rites the Len Dong religion. The work, however, was located in a separate room.
The main part of the exposition also included a video entitled Przejażdżka (Drive). It told a story of closeness, and pointed to the fact that the experience of closeness is different with different people, but there are some unchanging factors, such as its specific intensity, temperature and colour, which are transferred from the world of sensations onto the physical world. Falling in love always involves a specific person or persons, which further complicates relationships and dependencies. Ultimately, however, despite doubts, most often we decide to follow that feeling, which is often all the more seductive, precisely because of its unknown qualities. All artistic forms presented during the exhibition are significantly different from those Ziółkowski consistently used in the previous years, which made the exhibition quite a surprise. In an interview with Szum Magazine, he described his process:
I wanted to reset myself at a very deep level. I decided to go to Vietnam on an internal, spiritual and creative mission. It was a very radical step, but based on specific assumptions. The main one was that I would be open to everything that would come, but I wouldn't paint. No more painting. The moment when I would start painting was supposed to be the moment that I'd buy a return ticket. And I left, as it turned out – for eight months. I rented a house in one of the districts of Hanoi, very local, far from other foreigners, and even further from the art world. A motorbike was my closest friend, a scooter even. I wandered around the big city during days and nights, in unimaginable loneliness I was constantly looking for something. What? This state of mind in which random puzzles are arranged in long ornamental patterns that say everything and nothing about life and death.
Another exhibition related to Hanoi was Przebłyski (Glimpses) at Foksal Gallery. Lengthy visits to Vietnam over the past two years became the inspiration for Ziółkowski's latest works – a series of paintings made on glass and plexiglass. Their narrative combined cultural clichés with the artist's subjective experience. Terrible deities intertwined with various types of ritual scenes, exotic landscapes, oriental symbols, tigers, and movie-like lovers. The paintings referenced the very experience of travelling, which expands our consciousness but at the same time can be a psychedelic experience through being absorbed by another, exotic identity. This is manifested through the medium itself, which is a reference to spiritual icons. However, Ziółkowski does not recreate any particular religion, instead illustrating his own spiritual journey, drawing on the mythology available to him and connecting cultures.
Similarly to the exhibition at Nha San Studio, Ziółkowski wanted to capture and depict different emotions, sensations and states. In Southeast Asia, painting on glass aims to preserve the work against humidity and high temperatures.
That same year, Ziółkowski's individual exhibition entitled Nasellini opened in the project room of MAN Museum, located in Nuoro, Italy. This is the third exhibition in this series and each one revolved around the eponymous nassellini, which is a peculiar kind of pasta; an imaginary dish inspired by the shape of the nasal cavity that evokes the legend of 'tortellini', which are said to originate from observation of the navel.
This was the artist's first exhibition in Italy, during which he presented a surreal advertising campaign promoting the Nasellini. It included paintings, sculptures and videos which were made during the artist's residence in Sardinia. The artist arranged the exhibition space so that it resembled a traditional Italian trattoria, and his paintings, which were randomly hung on the walls, resembled colourful posters. The videos featured were shot partly on the coast of Sardinia and partly in Nuoro.
The project explored the line between the real and unreal. Ziółkowski used irony to mock the reverence with which pasta is treated in Italy.
At the exhibition Ian Moon (2017) at the Hauser & Wirth Gallery in London, Jakub Julian Ziółkowski once again transferred his conjured, imaginary world onto a canvas. In addition to paintings, the exhibition also presented sculptures and ceramics. All the works were created during the artist's eight-month stay in Hanoi, when Ziółkowski intensively experimented with various forms of expression.
The artist claims that he has recently undergone a personal and a creative transformation that was reflected in the exhibition. The eponymous ‘Ian Moon’ is Ziółkowski's alter-ego, a man from the stars, a citizen of the galaxy. Ian also refers to English ‘I am’ and to the Polish name ‘Jan’ – who was the artist's great-grandfather.
Hallucinated images presented during the exhibition took the viewers on an emotional journey and opened up Ziółkowski’s inner sphere. Flames, skulls, body parts and entrails chaotically tangled together, creating a gateway to his world of feelings, both positive and negative. Various anatomical motifs create complicated configurations; sometimes, as in the case of Mindscape, they are repetitive. In this picture, the amount and concentration of details has reached an obsessive level.