Location. The Stone Bell House is situated in the center of Prague at the Old Town Square and dates back to the second half of the 13th century. The building has undergone several reconstructions and it was only in 1988 when the City of Prague assigned the house to the Prague City Gallery, which uses it as a space for its significant exhibition projects. The building also houses a bookstore offering a wide range of publications and catalogues, while the café is situated on the rear ground floor of the house.
Curator. Jiří Machalický — an established Czech curator, currently working as a full-time NoD gallery curator apart from freelance.
Artist. Dalibor Chatrný a prominent Czech artist, who worked in different movements (conceptual, minimalism, land art etc.) but never fully identified himself with any specific one.
About the exhibition. A retrospective of Dalibor Chatrný, laid out in several sections, each corresponding to a particular “circle” of the artist’s creative endeavour. From the mid-1960s, he came to draw on the potential offered by the graphic grid. Applying the method of perforation, he presented his own vision of natural processes. His projects dating from the early 1970s were focused on the various relations between artist and environment. Using strings and cords, he dealt with interconnections between elements, and he explored connotations between reality and shadow. He worked with the energy of magnets, as well as with the effect of reflection and mirror image. He found a medium for experimentation in the quality of colour. He drew and painted with both hands simultaneously. In the second half of the 1980s, he explored the method of dyeing and soaking textile fabrics. During the same period he also experimented with obstructed drawing. An extensive chapter of his oeuvre is constituted by compositions of textual elements.
Personal Opinion. Stone Bell Tower Gallery space may be very tricky as it has its own character that strictly does not allow too much artistic freedom, it is certainly not a white cube and you are forced to follow its curves and watch the narrow arch doorways, but this retrospective has shown it all working together with a massive amount of diverse works of a single artist. As a retrospective it of course tries to achieve the a;most impossible — cover years and years of productive work of Chatrný, and in for a contemporary art show it has a surprisingly great mass of text explaining particular periods and styles sometimes going into extremes and describing what is right before your eyes, so the amount of information one receives is overwhelming. At the same time the placement is absolutely genius: narrow corridors with small sketches, intimate dark room with film, everything sectioned precisely to the works that are presented, chronological but not too much. I would say both the works and the organization of them are impressive and definitely deserve a visit. I cannot say for sure, by it seems that Chatrný himself who put so much thought into every single piece of art would be satisfied with this retrospective.
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