ZEI GEZUNT // KEEP WELL
LEJB PILANSKI
Displaced & Assembled Pieces
Photographed and Curated by Sean Wainsteim
From boot-removers to dustpans to machines that thread bobbins, ZEI GEZUNT // KEEP WELL is an exhibition of Displaced and Assembled pieces by Lejb Pilanski, (then) a 97 year old Jewish former sweatshop tailor and refugee. Photographed and curated by his grandson, filmmaker Sean Wainsteim, Lejb’s second-hand repurposed objects and assemblages sit alongside official archive documents that chronicle Lejb’s journey from Post-War Eastern Europe to Canada. Echoing Lejb’s disparate creations, the exhibition mixes constructed objects, personal materials, photography, typography, textiles and audio/video. The collection invites dialogue on the value of self-taught resourcefulness as a means of survival. These displaced-objects-made-useful are evocative pieces of the struggle of a once displaced man.
ANYTHING I MADE, NO ONE IS GOING TO COPY ME
With a life steeped in loss and hardship, Lejb trained himself to be ever adaptable. Be it emotional, figurative or physical, Lejb took whatever scraps the world left him and envisioned new ways to transform them into something functional. Lejb fashioned his own versions of mundane and often affordable utilitarian objects. He began to find joy in his creations. Collected together they seem like inverted cousins of Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades.
