David Böhm, Jiří Franta – ?! at Nevan Contempo

Location. Nevan Contempo a small independent gallery in Žižkov area

Curator. Pavel Švec

Artists. David Böhm, Jiří Franta – established yet playful duo from Czech Republic

Exhibition. a bright and colorful show that has drawings, sculpture, installation and video by the famous duo;

Personal Opinion. It would not be fare to theorize this show too much as it is clear from the curatorial text, that the aim of this exhibition was to play, draw attention and joke a little about the existing patterns of the viewer experience in the sphere of contemporary art, however the duo could not escape a trap of making a statement even when they are trying to make a ‘no serious statement’ show. And that is the trick with the conceptual art: once you an idea behind the show, you cannot run away into ‘just fun’ or ‘just beauty’, — so it is almost inevitable that a clever artist will produce a work of art that is thought-provoking.

Bone collectors at Hunt Kastner

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.

Artist. Dominik Lang  an established Czech artist; was awarded the Jindrich Chalupecky Award in 2013; is known for his unique approach to the art space and its architecture.

Exhibition. The latest show by Dominik Lang presents a massive skeleton of a mythic creature that has inhabited the gallery’s central space and left a wall of the back room for an almost minimalist piece with the sculptor’s tools.

Personal Opinion. It is always surprising to me how some artists have the talent and the skill to involve the space of the exhibition into the show, to make it a part of the artistic experience other than just use it. And there are many ways to transform a room physically and visually, but Lang has managed to incorporate the space of Hunt Kastner gallery almost without even touching it: he has used the relatively small size of the space to force the view inside the sculpture and to create a feeling of a spectacle with the simplest materials; he has turned pipes and sticks into a beast, into an unknown specimen of great visual weight. The effect that it has on a viewer is similar to what must have been the effect of the first display of the dinosaur’s skeletons: the viewers are simply hypnotized by it and by the fact that it somehow fits into this space.

Kult of Morena at city surfer office

Location. City surfer office – small one room gallery in the office of the record company in Žižkov.

Curator. not mentioned

Artists. Jarmila Mitríková & David Demjanovič graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava in 2011. Mitríková (* 1986) studied at the studio pottery by Ivica Vidrové and painting studio with Ivan Csudaia. Demjanovič (* 1985) studied in the studio of intermedia by Anton Black. Although both of them are  successfully devoted to different forms of art, their duo project combines the burning pyrography. In their work they are working with several motifs associated with their geopolitical space: Christian and pagan traditions, mysticism, superstition and mystification of history, public mass social events, folklore and nationalism.

Exhibition. The show presents pictures of alternative history of Czechoslovakia with public cremation of the meritorious members of society, state-controlled propagation of spiritualism and  worship of pagan gods as a method of suppressing Catholicism progress, preparing youth to fight the class enemy using traditional incantations and occult practices.

Personal Opinion. The show is a great example of an intercultural text with rich imaginary and complex coding, presenting the clash of two worlds in Czechoslovakia, a historical situation which is known to any territory that had to undergo some sort of conversion on the social and spiritual levels.

Gábor Koós: 20-year-old forest at Kostka Gallery

Location. meet factory – is an non-profit art center for contemporary art, theater and music that has 3 gallery spaces, artist studios, a music hall and a theater and provides possibilities for interdisciplinary exchange. It is located a bit far from the city center but it is worth a long ride, and you can always come for the open studios night or browse through the galleries before a concert for a full experience.

Curator. Zuzana Jakalová

Artist. Gábor Koós is an emerging Hungarian artist of Slovakian origin who lives and works in Budapest and is currently finishing his residency program at meet factory.

Exhibition. «Out of his experience with a forest nearby Lučenec where he spent his childhood and adolescence years, hungarian artist Gábor Koós creates an emotional landscape of this familiar and beloved piece of land.» — a condensed description of the show, that offers much more than a visual memory of the artist, it recreates the time and space as well as the sum of energy spent to catch the moment.

Personal Opinion. This is clearly not the first time that Gábor is working with the woodcut imprints, he has been creating printed memories of the objects that are dear to him but this work like no other creates the atmosphere and in a way echoes Penone’s work in a forest nearby his house.

Despite the fact that Gábor’s work has a strong physical presence it feels as if it was made of air: an effect that is produced by the gaps in the printing and the web of monochrome lines in the reflection. As a memory that can never stay fully preserved in our mind even if we try to contain it in a photograph or a video, his work has a quality of fragility and gentleness. Maybe this is the reason why the viewers are intimidated by it, they are afraid to damage it, as any new memory damages the old one little by little distorting it and forcing it out of our brain. On the other hand it might a completely new experience for the viewer to find himself in a four-dimensional space of the artist’s private memory, to be inside it and to be able to see yourself being their. Conceptually it is may be a difficult experience from the point of view of subject-object relations, in this situation for a moment you might be lost, trying to establish a regular direct position of a spectator.

Whatever the magic behind this show is, the show is a great example of a live art and a live creator using the given space of Kostka gallery at its maximum and with a great effect.

Martin Horák at Fotograf Gallery

Location. Photograph gallery is the gallery connected to the Fotograf magazine; its primary goals are  «to show the youngest progressive generation of artists as well as the older generation and artists whose work was wrongfully underestimated. Furthermore, the gallery would like to support curatorial projects either with a national or an international character, through all the generations, which would include more than just the sphere of photography itself.» It is supported by the Ministry of Culture and by the Magistrate of City of Prague. Fotograf Gallery is a white-cube space with the traces of the original architecture of the building.

Curator. Jiří Ptáček

Artist. Martin Horák Exhibition. I have already touched upon the question of the superimposition of the future on the heritage in the post about a trio show at the Colloredo-Mensfeld palace, and this show develops this topic but in a slightly different way. The exhibition of the 20-year-old prints by Jiří David, a well-known Czech photographer, who created series of the mirrored photographs of the famous people may be no surprise, but the fact that these prints were ripped of a wall by a young artist and stayed conserved under his mattress for so long, the fact that they are worn out and yellowish after all these years of providing ‘support’ gives this show a conceptual twist, it creates a retrospective and a personal story.

Personal Opinion. One of the aspects of this show that seems vital to me is the text, for a simple reason that if we imagine a spectator walking in clueless into the room and witnessing all the Monroe posters what would happen at best is that he would recognize the work of David and receive it as a collection of his posters. But once we introduce the story behind the posters to the viewer, his or her attention immediately shifts to the idea introduced in the show and away from the figure of Monroe or David.

Eva Koťátková: The Two-Headed Biographer and the Museum of Notions at Pradelna Bohnice

Location. Pradelna Bohnice is an independent art space that functions in the psychiatric clinic. Situated in one of the abandoned buildings of the functioning psychiatric clinic in Prague 8 the art space of Pradelna Bounce seems to be created specially for Kotatkova’s work, as it itself sets the spectator in an included position within the system of being watched and analyzed.

Curator. Zuzana Jakalová

Artist. Eva Koťátková – one of the established and most well-known young conceptual Czech artists.

Exhibition. The exhibition project The Two-Headed Biographer and the Museum of Notions focuses on «the role of biography in the work of mentally ill artists, whether they take the form of text, image or everyday performance.» It presents Eva research on the art of the mentally ill artists and her own implementation of the projects that they had once planned, accompanied by performances.

Personal Opinion. As I have already mentioned the space has its own aura for a clear reason as entering the territory of the psychiatric hospital is not a common experience; as you walk around the place and ask people for directions to the gallery you secretly hope they do not take you for one of the patients who has a fixation on an imaginary gallery. Once you have found the place you feel safe for a moment, but the short feeling of comfort leaves as soon as you enter the exhibition. Pradelna is not a white-cube space, it has traces of its former function as a laundry, it has signs of former activities and it is hard to tell Eva’s pieces from the remains of the past, like it happens with the two rolled carpets in the corner of the first room.

Eva’s work fills in the space with the complex system of visual and psychic objects, they pull you into the dream-like reality of the mentally ill, and if there ever was a voice for all the repressed and undervalued ideas of such people Eva’s work seems to be the embodiment of it.

The exhibition has a strong effect and is successful in the way that it makes you question the approach to the identities of the mentally ill people:  if you were to hear a biography based story on any of the presented patients you would not be able to understand them as much as if you were presented with the art that the created. This leads us to the point that artistic language may have communication instruments that evoke empathy unknown to the generalizing tools of biography writing.

Close-Up at etc. gallery

* all of the curators and artists are listed here (did not want to accidentally misspell anyone’s name)

Location. etc. galerie one of the first independent contemporary art galleries which is  focused on presenting primarily young art from both the Czech and international scene.

Exhibition. The show offers multiple projects of the young and established engaged artists from Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Slovakia and Czech Republic who have protested some of the locally relevant issues, which concern art. The exhibition was organized by etc. galerie and Artyčok.TV

Personal Opinion. This project illustrates the ability of art community to raise questions that need to be asked and has shown how it can be done in a variety of ways in a number of different locations. It shows how contemporary art can transcend its limits of visual means and take shape of any media including calendars, applications, newspapers, booklets, protests and so on. The project has managed to act on different levels by addressing the local issues and by presenting these efforts as a case of art community acting together and demonstrating the multiple possibilities of protest.

the sexy history calendar that ended up by our dining table.

Polidicks: Dicks in Politics at the solution

Location. the Solution is a small private gallery run by an artist Mark Divo, and offers 20 square metres of floorspace of The White Cube in the middle of the shop. It is used to show works by local and international contemporary artists once or twice a month.

Curator. Dr. Egg

Artist. Ali Tareen a young artist of British origin currently living and working in Prague.

Exhibition. A series of caricature drawings that depict contemporary Czech politicians whose ‘adventures’ and misdeeds are being magnified. The idea of the exhibition is something that the curator had long wanted to implement and some pieces may be seen more as a collaboration of the artist and curator.

Personal Opinion. As much as I have appreciated the humor of the works, the exhibition however is a one-time statement, a sophisticated provocation  or a set of caricatures that left the newspaper space and entered the space of canvas. As with much of the politically engaged art it is hard to draw the line between the artistic call of the creator and a reaction to the current political events, I have a feeling if it was not for the curator, Ali would have stopped at just one piece of joke. On the other hand raising the problem of sexism and arrogance in Czech politics is an important step that needs to be done in order to bring attention to such issues.

HONZA ZAMOJSKI: FOUR EGGS THEORY at Futura

Location. Centre for Contemporary Art FUTURA is a private non-profit institution funded exclusively by grant applications. The FUTURA gallery, one of the exhibition spaces of this project,  is a three-floor exhibition space with a total area of 1,000 m² located in Prague’s Smíchov quarter. The exhibition is located at the top floor.

Artist. Honza Zamojski a young conceptual artist from Poland known for the use of bright basic colors and surreal logic of his works.

Exhibition. “In the “Four Eggs Theory”1 the key element of illustrations is a synthetic image of half an egg – a closed system with a core and a surrounding atmosphere. This theory aims to describe an individual, though also, from a wider perspective, the cyclical and recurring process of the artistic creation of a Work. The Work is the key element of artistic Practice. At the same time, the theory described in the following text could be analyzed through an illustrating diagram. If we were to seek an analogy in our common knowledge, we ought to ask: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” 

The current show may be seen as an illustration to the four eggs theory or as multidimensional textbook on the logic of the four eggs, a theory of creation and work visually explained to the spectator in the simplest schemes and colors.

TELEPATHY OR ESPERANTO? at Futura Gallery

Location. Centre for Contemporary Art FUTURA is a private non-profit institution funded exclusively by grant applications. The FUTURA gallery, one of the exhibition spaces of this project,  is a three-floor exhibition space with a total area of 1,000 m² located in Prague’s Smíchov quarter. It provides open-brick  labyrinth cellar, a white-cube first floor gallery with a number of interconnected rooms and a rectangular white-cube top floor space, so it can have a number of shows running simultaneously or host large-scale projects.

Curator. Jan Brož – a young Czech contemporary visual artist who has taken the position of a curator for this show.

Artists. Aleš Čermák (CZ), Barbora Kleinhamplová (CZ), Deanna Havas (USA), Irina Lotarevich (USA), Martin Kohout (CZ/DE), Micah Hesse (USA), Peter Friel (USA), Puppies Puppies (USA), PWR Studio (Rasmus Svensson & Hanna Nilsson) (D/SWE), Richard Nikl (CZ), Sara Magenheimer (USA), Vojtěch Fröhlich (CZ) : such variety of young artists is explained by personal preferences of the curator, as Jan explained that he wanted to bring together in one show works of artists whose work he enjoys and works that would not be displayed in Prague otherwise. 

Exhibition. The show occupies the first floor white-cubish gallery and is constructed in a way where the first soda-machine piece serves as a leading thread of Ariadne, which visitors follow from room to room. Most of the works were created specially for the show, and artists were asked to do something that falls out of their usual style or technique; some of the works have direct reference to one another.

Personal Opinion. The position of a curator as a professional who is responsible for the concept and the organization of the art show as we know it now has emerged in the 20th century, it is a professional field that yet has to be developed and mastered and that has a great space for creativity as has the art itself. Telepathy or Esperanto gives us an example of the show where the individuality of the curator is most visible and the whole show may be approached as a big collective art project conducted by the chief artist; the show has both fluidity and flexibility and a concrete goal to achieve, it demonstrates work of Jan Brož and his artistic approach more than it does display all the artists featured. For someone who was not lucky enough to get a personal tour with a curator the show may appear as a bright kaleidoscope or as a treasure hunt, but at the same time the connection between some pieces is explicit like in the case of the ‘boneless’ video and the rubber hand right opposite to it. The presence of Jan Brož is visible in the small details like title tags, and in the pieces that he assisted to create, so it is almost if you could read his mind and catch the thoughts of curator/artist at work.

With all of the above being said the show does make a point on globalization and the impact of global economy and digital era on the way the world operates; all of the pieces seem to be the extracts of the global media culture, all of them use the materials that can be found anywhere around the world, they entertain and at the same time provoke thoughts and questions on the modern values.

intervention_3: SUPERIMPOSITIONS at Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace

Location. Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace is one of the historic buildings in the very centre of Prague that belongs to the complex of Prague City Gallery. A unique example of the palace architecture where Baroque meets two waves of Rococo the Colloredo-Mansfeld palace is a must visit location for anyone who is exploring Prague’s Old Town. At the present moment the palace is a partially renovated art space which provides room for experiment in contemporary art.

Curator. Monika Doležalová

Artists. Anežka Hošková, Jakub Hošek, Nik Timková are a trio of young Czech artists who often create and exhibit together as well as engage in all sorts of activities like traveling and organizing music events together. All of them are well-known local artists who play a significant role in the developments of visual arts in the contemporary art scene.

Personal Opinion. The term superimposition when used literally  about graphics means placement of an image on top of an already-existing image in order to add to the overall image some type of effect, but also sometimes to conceal something. The current exhibition at the Colloredo-Masfeld Palace makes a case where not simply parts of images or filters are put upon each other but rather concepts of the contemporary art and unique vision of the trio is placed on the balanced and rich canvas of the palace. In the world where technology has made it possible to «cut and paste» anything and anywhere the ‘intervention’ of the conceptual art into the interiors of the palace does not feel as shocking as the creators of the show may have intended it to be. From a certain perspective any upcoming cultural change or trend is an imposition of an image, thought, view or invention on the canvas of our heritage.

From this point of view we may see in its full complexity the art pieces presented as something that contains traces and symbols of the past combined with the popular culture and the personal position of each artist.

We can separate our past from the present and view them neutrally, but any analysis that lacks perspective is less likely to be relevant. To me the ‘superimpositions’ makes the case not only about three progressive artists intruding the classical museum space, but illustrates any art at any given time and stresses the importance of context and history.