Stories by George Radojčič at Artinbox gallery

Location. Artinblx  gallery is a private gallery that is specializing in photography and graphic art located in the center of the city right next to Mustek metro station

Curator. Nadia Rovderová, Terezie Zemánkova

Artist. George Radojčič is a young artist born in Sarajevo who lives in works in Prague.

Exhibition. This show is a part of the Art Brut and outsider art  show series which presents George’s drawings and paintings on various topics including christian themes, personal relations of the artist and series of his illustrations to Karel Čapek’s works.

The mysterious and original world of the rough images is highly emotional and expressive and creates an impression of a dark monochrome cartoon.

Bâton Serpent by Huang Yong Ping at MAXXI Rome

Location. MAXXI is  the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, is the first Italian national institution devoted to contemporary creativity. The diversity of the activities held reflects MAXXI’s vocation as a place for the exhibition of its collection but also a laboratory for cultural experimentation and innovation, for the study, research and production of the contemporary aesthetic contents.

MAXXI is located in the North-west of the city and if you are planning your visit from the city center it might be best to start at the Spanish stairs, walk to the Gallery of Modern Art and then go to MAXXI. 

Curator. Hou Hanru and Giulia Ferracci

Artist. Huang Yong Ping is a French contemporary artist and one of the most famous Chinese Avant-garde artists, who was one of the first to treat art a strategy of cultural and political influence.

Exhibition. If you enjoy a well-though and a well-implemented conceptual art that reflects on the worldwide spread problems of humanity that we are facing today, than Baton Serpent is definitely the show for you. As the accompanying booklet claims :

the exhibition puts emphasis on the spectacle, highlighting the visionary nature of the works as they interact with the spaces of the museum

In the presented exhibits Huang Yong Ping recontextualizes myth, religion and reality and creates a narrative that reminds a parable that can be applied almost universally.

Personal Opinion. The combination of thorough research, rich cultural knowledge of the world and a clear humanist position under the influence of such figures as Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp and John Cage has produced the figure of an artist whose work will leave no one indifferent. His works have the power to speak to everyone on both individual and socially unified levels. The variety of topics raised in his works is so wide and the final result is so shocking that each of his works deserves a separate research article.

The exhibition has managed however to create a narrative, to present the artist and to explain his intentions, providing the spectator with the examples of Huang Yong Ping’s own research. As almost any other MAXXI exhibition the Baton Serpent has a lot of text: they welcome you at the entrance, they accompany each exhibit, they explain each detail, you can take a booklet with all of the texts — so some might say this is too didactic and too managed. But if some of the shows may be left for the spectator to decrypt this one definitely needs unpacking especially given the fact, that Huang Yong Ping has never been displayed in Italy until now.

Bellisima L’Italia Dell’alta Moda 1945-1968 at MAXXI Rome

Location. MAXXI is  the National Museum of XXI Century Arts, is the first Italian national institution devoted to contemporary creativity. The diversity of the activities held reflects MAXXI’s vocation as a place for the exhibition of its collection but also a laboratory for cultural experimentation and innovation, for the study, research and production of the contemporary aesthetic contents. MAXXI is located in the North-west of the city and if you are planning your visit from the city center it might be best to start at the Spanish stairs, walk to the Gallery of Modern Art and then go to MAXXI.

Curator. Maria Luisa Frisa, Anna Mattirolo and Stefano Tonchi with Gabriele Monti

Artist. Alberto Biasi, Alberto Burri, Getulio Alviani and others

Exhibition. This exhibition with Bulgary as the main financial contributor is trying to make an intercultural  showcase of high fashion presentation for the specific time period in Italy. it has a beautifully lined narration that follows the specially constructed runway and is structurally divided into time periods and occasions mixed with the documentary  video clips and works of modern art that correspond with the fashion style.

Personal Opinion. It should be no surprise that fashion, history and art are closely connected and especially in the country which is considered to be one of the world leaders in the fashion industry. The period that starts from the end of the Second World War and goes to the rebellious 60s is a time of constant improvisation and transformation in all spheres of the european life. The selection of works of art presented in the show create a feeling of total unity between fashion and art while the diverse choice of outfits blinds with color, beads and glitter.

Drawing by Drawing by Stanislav Kolibal at Veletrezni palac

Location. Trade Fair Palace, “Respirium” and mezzanine gallery

Curator. Adam Budak and Martin Dostál

Artist. Stanislav Kolibal is a renown Czech artist and sculptor who started his career in the 1950s and whose work is counted among the fundamentals of modern Czech art. He ‘regards drawing as a definitive work of art, while drawings, in his mind, also generate a shift in concept or a major turning point in the artist’s creative output, presenting – in concentrated form – his approach to a particular theme and its development.’

Exhibition.  Drawing by Drawing is on display at the mezzanine gallery of the Fair Trade Palace, features artist’s drawing cycles from 1968 to the present day. While at the exhibition it is important to keep in mind that the architecture of the show and all of the introductory texts to the sections are created by the artist himself. This puts the show into an intimate context, where the artist is highly involved in the life and fate of his work, where the artist tries his best to explain his intentions and thoughts behind each period.

Personal Opinion. To someone who is not familiar with the field of work of Kolibal the exhibition may seem to appear monotonous and constantly repeating itself in every work, but to anyone who has very tried to build an artistic career and find appropriate style and technique to match the concept and the inner view this exhibition offers a detailed sequence of metamorphosis that Kolibal’s work has undergone during almost 50 years.

The Best Tailor in Town, group exhibition at Hunt Kastner Galerie

Location. Hunt Kastner Galerie is a private gallery that supports mostly young Czech artists and is known for presenting its artists on the international level.

Curator. Edith Jerabkova and Jiri Kovanda

Artist. Jan Bohac, Richard Healy, Anna Hulacova, Ondrej Kinsky, David Krnansky, Marek Meduna, Marketa Othova, Jiri Thyn, Viktorie Valocka and Klara Vystrcilova

(c) the H&K official website

Exhibition. The topic set by the title of the exhibition is the correspondence between tailoring and art, with no particular line of thought it is more of the collection of anything thinkable that exist on the intersection of the two creative fields.

Personal Opinion. For a space of two medium sized rooms the contents of the show may appear a bit crowded and some of the bigger pieces deserve more space. All of the works relate to the stated topic, by if in some cases the connection is obvious, in others it feels as if the curator simply wanted to have everything possible on display.

The exhibition does not suggest any type of linear narrative, both rooms may be explored in a series of circular walks, the spectator can turn from one work to another and go back around if he wishes so.

In terms of the theme it is hard to set the problem for the show without the help of curators, the question of what do we call the material or digital creation of works of art and how it corresponds with process of tailoring a dress is not fully answered to me, the diversity of the exhibits suggests that almost any work of art is tailored to fit the creative view of the artist as well as some of the clothing items may have traces of artistic approach.

No pain, No game by /////////fur//// at the Ludwig Museum in Budapest

Location. Ludwig Museum in Budapest (on of many Ludwig museums in the world) is a Museum of Contemporary Art that collects and displays masterworks of modern and contemporary art. Its permanent collection has representatives of American Pop art, but is mostly focusing on Eastern and Central European art, and puts a special emphasis on presenting the Hungarian art of the 60’s to recent days in an international context. Besides, temporary exhibitions showcase leading artists of the international scene as well as the best-known Hungarian masters. As many of the contemporary art museums in Europe LM is located a bit far from the city center, but if you have a spare 40 minutes, you can take a walk along the embankment and have a nice break from the tourist crowd.

Note: The exhibition was commissioned from //////////fur//// by the Goethe Institute is a part of the PLAY INSTINCT! project and will be on view in many European cities until 2016, so you may try tracking them down around Europe and visit it some place else (not Prague though, as it was here from december till february)

Artist.

The name //////////fur//// covers two media artists and art critics, gadget artists and game designers, Volker Morawe and Tilmann Reiff. They are perceived by some as artistic sadists, other consider them – by reason of their boldly fresh and unconventional approach – the Dadaists of their genre. – LM

Exhibition.

(c) official fur site

Personal Opinion. The exhibition is focused on the concept of play as one of the core problems of the modern generation, that seeks to be amused only by the digital screens of devices that offer endless games. The attempt of the show is to turn our perception of digital gaming around and bring the realm of physical and emotional into the process of playing. The exhibition offers you to play, but unlike the mobile and computer games, that we are used to, fur’s games make you feel, work and pay for the results of the game.

The show may remind you of an amusement park, but in fact it raises the question of our perception of the virtual actions, that may lead to something real: the establishment of long-distance wars with the help of new technology like drones has diminished the responsibility of the actor, to the mouse-clicking, while in reality this is no shooter game; the cgi technologies have made it possible to edit any video and is already being used in the media wars, but somehow people tend to believe the screens. In this sense the ‘no pain, no game’ show is not a fun family activity, it is a reaction to the world of illusory reality that is heading to take over the minds of masses.

Přístroj na udržování pořádku (apparatus for maintaining order) by Ivan Svoboda at Galerie 35m2

Note: the title of the exhibition was translated on my own, I hope that Ivan and Michal don’t mind of this version

Location. Gallery name is directly related to the spatial layout. There are two nearly identical small rooms that were rebuilt from a workshop on the ground floor of the house. The gallery is accessed through a courtyard of Café Pavlač – one of the benefactors of the gallery. The aim of the curators Michael Pěchouček and Petra Steiner is to work primarily with the youngest authors, recent graduates or students of art colleges. Programmatically th emphasis is placed on contemporary painting and photography, with possible overlaps towards installations or conceptual art .

Curator. Michal Pechouček

Artist. Ivan Svoboda  an established Czech artist who lives and works in Prague

Exhibition. Unfortunately, on the day of the visit one of the exhibition rooms was closed due to some technical problems with the video, so the only pieces available were the analog photographs of the almost monochrome outlines of still-life settings.

It is important to note that Ivan is an artist who has once refused to work with the classical art techniques and moved on to working with film and photography, developing the relationship between image and text and balancing illusions with words.

Another thing worth mentioning is the location of the gallery: Prague has a great number of small private galleries that exhibit young and interesting artists as well as established ones and in case of 35m2 and other ‘hidden’ galleries  one really needs to explore the area to find the place.

After the End of Art by Daniel Vlček and Levi van Veluw at Drdova Gallery

Location. Drdova Gallery Drdova Gallery works to support the future of its artists; the continually evolving practice of established artists, and the wide–ranging potential of emerging and new talents. primarily focuses on the co-operation with Czech and Slovak artists of the young and middle-aged generation. The space provides two white cube rooms for the shows, one spacious with big open windows, and a smaller discreet area.

Curator. Václav Janoščik

Artist. Daniel Vlček is an established Czech artist and dj,  founder and curator of the Ferdinand Baumann gallery, Berlinskej Model, member of the Groupe Guma Guar, teacher of graphic art and prints graphic. As a music producer and organizer he creates a visual paraphrase of the compositional elements of electronic music. As it is explained in the introduction to his work at Drdova website : “On his canvases, Vlček constructs geometric sets of basic circular motives with the diameter of the vinyl (“brush”) he has used.” and the major aspects of his work include “the search for links to music (after all, music represents another creative field of the artist) and the craftsman’s know-how -pressing vinyl grooves onto wet paint in a circular motion.”

Levi van Veluw  is a visual artist from Amsterdam who explores the topic of the time and deconstruction on his work.

Exhibition. The show contains a number of the most recent works by Daniel and a video by Levi that both illustrate visual and stereo perception of time and motion. The works are put together in triptychs and diptychs according to the time-period; Levi’s work appears as a surprise in the second dark room.

Personal Opinion. The curatorial intention behind this exhibition is to show that there is still vast areas of artistic exploration for visual art and more precisely for abstract painting after the “end of art” following the ideas of Arthur Danto. From this perspective Daniel creates the works of art that exist on the intersection of the media from the past and the abstract visual art of the present, he has created a language that translates and combines music and art together resulting in solid monochrome paintings.

(c) Drdova gallery webpage

Levi’s work is dedicated to the idea of temporality and the moment of end in the abstract and monochrome video art as he recreates the moment of the end in the Collapse of Cohesion 

.

Altogether the exhibition produces an effect of something solid and aesthetically pleasing even though the works themselves may be seen as an attempt to rediscover fields of the abstract painting and music that already existed on the Czech art scene and are presented by the older generation of artists.

Michal Drozen: Start up End down at Dům U Zlatého prstenu (ghmp)

Location. Start Up art project is a project of the Prague city gallery, that provides  a small exhibition space  (a ground floor room at the Golden Ring gallery) to the young emerging Czech artists as an attempt to help them get established and introduce young talent to the wider public.

Curator. Monika Doležalová

Artist. Michal Drozen is a young Czech artist, who is a recent graduate of Jiri Petrbok’s class, studio of drawing, Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He is interested in the urban culture and creates his works in series of paintings related to a certain thematic.

Exhibition. The series of works that reflect on the personal imprint and involvement of the artist into the urban life of Prague are set up as a life-size mirror windows of the restaurants and shops, where you feel almost as if you were the one inside and the figures in the paintings are looking in at you.

Personal Opinion. The exhibition captures both inner and outer dimension of Michal’s life as the paintings portray the outdoor dwelling of the young Czech culture hanging out in the streets, wondering around the solid buildings they also remind you of a social network profile, as if you were browsing through the photogallery of Michal and his friends with a strong Indie culture influence and dim colors.

To those who are unfamiliar with the work of Jiri Petrbok and his studio an exhibition offers a video interview and a booklet of Jiri/Michal collaborations, which explains the major goal of this atelier.

Fail by Martin Lukáč at SPZ gallery

Location. As they state at the official website Galerie SPZ is an independent venue for contemporary art by new and more established artists. The project was launched as a curatorial initiative by Lukáš Machalický and Robert Šalanda. Galerie SPZ’s agenda is defined by experimentation and confrontation. Each featured artist can choose a guest. In addition to their annual exhibition program SPZ also has a cycle for the flagpole outside the gallery (every 3 months an artist is selected to produce a large-format flag that will hang over the entrance).

Curator. Piotr Sikora

Artist. Martin Lukáč is a young Slovak artist who got his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and is mostly known for his expressive abstract mixed media paintings and series of paper drawings  both abstract and figurative.

(c) official spz website

Personal Opinion. This small exhibition has a value to those who enjoy abstract yet original art as works of Martin Lukáč have a special aura of the young abstraction still seeking for the form.

The curatorial statement for this exhibition raises a question of the zombie formalism and its relevance in the context of the contemporary art where the revolutionary ideas of the avant-garde have been raped by the narrow-minded consumerism  .

This problem is not something new to the art as every game changing and shocking artistic invention has over time lost its edge as the limits of creativity were pushed further by yet another progressive artist: there always is a moment when art enters an everyday space and the wider the communication channels, the more art enters into people’s houses on the notebook prints, wallpapers, sofa cushions, clothes all treated as something visually pleasant with almost zero respect to its cultural value. As it has been pointed out in one of the closing presentations of the exhibition we might as well expect zombie conceptualism as the next wave of mass ignorance signs of which are already showing.

The case of abstract art is also complicated by the fact that wide culturally uneducated masses see it as something inferior to the preceding and well-known works of art that strike a spectator by technique and complexity — a point of view on art that surprisingly still exists but truly belongs somewhere back in the end of the 19th century. If such attitude still has a place to be it can only mean that the revolution in art still has to conquer masses of conservative minds who are yet not ready to accept neither modern nor postmodern perspectives. For all the people on the side of abstract art it means that abstraction is no less relevant now than it was a hundred years ago and anyone has a right to explore this area advocating the freedom of creativity.

WORK DON’T PLAY by Black Media (CZ) at Futura Karlin Studios

Location. KARLIN STUDIOS is a former factory hall of ČKD in Prague’s Karlín quarter right next to  Vitkov National Memorial. The art space includes a 500 m² exhibition space curated by the FUTURA team (private non-profit institution funded exclusively by grant applications) and 17 artist studios with concessionary rent provided to Czech and international artists for at least one year. KARLIN STUDIOS also provides space for the documentation centre – the Foundation for Contemporary art, an extensive archive of Czech contemporary artists and two independently ran galleries. The studios provide wide space and maximum freedom for the exhibitions with its almost neutral yet urban architecture.

Artist. As Anetta Mona Chisa notes after her interview with the artists Black Media group was founded as a creative instrument with cooperative and production aspects. The members initially wanted to form a music band but music experiments and posing attempts in order to realize audio media covers have shown they were not ready yet. Therefore, the group withdrew to the realm of visual arts and began to work as a instrument of realization for actions no artist would like to realize alone.

Exhibition. The exhibition illustrates  contrast  and  at the same time interconnection between production and art, professionalism and hobby in a series of works that create an atmosphere of an artsy workshop with readymades and mixed media installations.

pictures from the official flickr account of Karlin Studios

Personal Opinion. From the moment of Duchamp’s revolution in art many artists have drawn inspiration from the daily objects  surrounding us as well as the process of production and later use that such objects undergo. The Black Media group takes it further by drawing attention to the phenomenon of Czech DIY in the exhibition Work Don’t Play. It is ironical how the title seems to be exactly opposite to the content of this dynamic and lively exhibition as most of the presented pieces make you think of someone playing with tools in a workshop, rather than a serious and well-planned manufacture. This contrast is certainly intentional as is the inner conflict of the DIY: one tries to produce something utilitarian using his own skills and creativity, which is nothing less than a play of our cognitive functions.

I would agree with the artists on the point that from a certain perspective any DIY has an artistic potential, as it is driven by individual creativity and is a counterposition to the world of mass market. If the industrial revolution had at first ruined the handcrafts and put technological perfection of fabricated goods on the pedestal, then the worldwide flow of mass production in time did exactly the opposite by lowering the value of such goods and creating a space for the DIY increasing the value of any product that has a ‘handmade’ tag.

High technologies like 3d printers and complicated machinery touched all spheres of our lives including art, where big names have turned into massive art production studios where artist do not get to create their works by hand, posing a question of originality and authenticity. In the same way Black Media group displays their respect to the craftsmen and handymen for their attempts of creating something, we as the spectator should appreciate the works of artists who in our age of technological advancement have a courage to create a work of art by hand from the things and materials that surround us, and by doing so create a dialogue between life and art.