Aesthetic Confessions: Rafael Jablonka

Born in Koło, Poland in 1952, Rafael Jablonka emigrated to Germany in 1975 and studied art history at University Bochum. He opened Jablonka Gallery in 1988 in Cologne. Until 2017, the gallery showed contemporary artists including Mike Kelley, Katharina Fritsch, Richard Prince, Francesco Clemente, Carol Dunham, Sherrie Levine, Andreas Slominski, Eric Fischl, Philip Taaffe, Ross Bleckner, Terry Winters, Andy Warhol, Araki, and Miquel Barceló. Jablonka established Böhm Chapel in 2010, an exhibition space dedicated to contemporary art. A part of Jablonka’s collection was first presented in 2008 at the National Museum in Krakow, and more recently, in 2020-2021 at the ALBERTINA Museum in Vienna.

Artist, writer, and independent curator Phong H. Bui is Publisher and Artistic Director of the Brooklyn Rail, the River Rail, Rail Editions, and Rail Curatorial Projects. Among many other awards, Bui received The Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Prize for Arts Writers in 2017, was the recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from University of the Arts in 2020, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Award for Distinguished Service to the Arts in 2021.