M HKA Ensembles

Other, 14 x 7 x 2.5 cm.

Collection: Courtesy Milena and Rafał Bujnowski.

Simon’s work Chinese Calculator is a formative example of one of his more modest yet concise works. Chinese Calculator is a calculator on a table. We see it is produced by the Unitra brand – the association of Polish consumer electronics manufacturers – from the era of Socialism. Inspired by a particular experience from a trip to China around the turn of the millennium, the calculator has in fact been subject to reverse-engineering by the artist. Simon travelled via the Trans-Siberian Express to the city of Manzhouli, located effectively at the intersection of Mongolia, Russia and China, where he attempted to change some money on the black market. Unwittingly, the trader cheated the artist with a calculator modified to give false results, increasing the percentage of exchange in their favour. Simon’s Chinese Calculator has been similarly modified to increase results by 7%, which is considered just below the perception limit where a client would realise the inaccuracy or fraudulence of a calculation, especially during the pre-smartphone era. With this work, Simon raises pertinent questions about the fallibility of even basic technology, as well as its role in the trust forming the basis of our exchanges within the everyday.

Adopting a kind of artistic chain reaction, Simon’s artworks can often lead to other artworks. Chinese Calculator became fundamental in the process of making the work The Holiday House, made half a year later. Simon made a small model of a house, in particular one based on the memory of the summer house he would visit with his family as a child on their holidays. Created from Balsa wood favoured by hobbyist model-makers, the artist made all the measurements to 25 construct the model using the Chinese Calculator. With the calculator’s degrees of variation, all the angles of the house’s structural supports and contours are slightly off, giving the model a slightly odd, precarious look with an un-level floor, and no segment being truly horizontal or vertical. Chinese Calculator and The Holiday House are exhibited together, which becomes particularly meaningful for the latter. Chinese Calculator actually provides much of the formal context for The Holiday House, bringing one inspiration from adulthood in dialogue with one from childhood.