Escape Artist: The Highs and Lows of Chris Dobrowolski

Jesse Roth's film 'Escape Artist: The Highs & Lows of Chris Dobrowolski' covers the 30-year career of the conceptual artist Chris Dobrowolski as told by him, through archival footage and guest speakers.

Screening Room Programme

Online from 29 October to 20 November 2021

Invited by Carolina Lio

Stylistically, the film joyously carries the viewer along a journey of art and adventure. Jesse's creativity and style meld seamlessly with the eccentricity of Dobrowolski's playful, on purpose aesthetically rough, yet deeply poetic work.

With a DIY aesthetics, Chris mixes real and unreal and creates Kafkaesque imaginaries and paradoxes that reinterpret with unpolished romanticism history, ideologies, capitalism, and daily life. Among his many adventures, he built a boat from driftwood found by the river Humber to scape art college in Hull; made (and flew) an aeroplane from tea chests and newspaper; made (and rode on) a sledge made from gold picture frames in the Antarctic; and repaired his family’s Triumph Herald Estate to drive from Essex to Rome, where his father served during World War 2.

Escape Artist won the award for Jury Prize in Essex DocFest 2020.

Chris Dobrowolski is an associate artist at 'Art Exchange', University of Essex where he recently had an exhibition called 'Remnants of Utopia'. He has exhibited and performed widely. As well as working internationally he has also participated in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. His work has recently been acknowledged and celebrated with the publication of a major book, 'ESCAPE' published by Jardine Press in 2014.

The Screening Room Programme is an online public programme curated by Looking Forward.