Translate

Monday, November 17, 2014

13.11.2014 Adam Vačkář

Adam Vačkář

intervention_2 Adam Vačkář: First and Last Things

19.9.2014 - 30.11.2014

Prague City Gallery

Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace, Karlova 2, Prague 1

Curator: Sandra Baborovská

Tue-Sun 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

Admission: 60 CZK full, 30 CZK reduced 



The title of this already second exhibition presented in the framework of the Intervention in the Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace paraphrases the eponymous book by H. G. Wells, and accordingly pursues the subject of a spiritually decaying society and the consequences of material overproduction.

The artist returns to the iconographically established genre of “nature morte” which mainly became widespread in the 17th century. Vačkářʼs works, however, are not canvases but photographs of withering or artificial flowers, the latter combined with fresh ones without offering a first-sight distinction between the two. The series of photographs is accompanied by a project entitled Margin of Hope, created in Morocco in early 2014. It documents the clash between consumer society and the original native community and employs plastic bottles as a launching pad for further elaboration, as well as a catalyst of faith in a brighter future. Vačkář reserved some space in the ballroom of the palace for ambient minimalist music and a display of musical scores the “notes” of which he punched out by pistol shots.

Adam Vačkář (*1979) studied at the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design and at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-arts in Paris. This is his third exhibition at the Prague City Gallery (following his events “Start-up” and “Gross Domestic Product”).


























14.11.2014 Marianne Viero

Marianne Viero

Invariant plates

7th of November - 5th of December 2014

Fotograf Gallery

Školská 28, 110 00 Praha 1

Curator: Jiří Ptáček

Opening hours: Tue-Thu 1 p.m.– 7 p.m., Fri 1 p.m.– 6 p.m.

Admission: free


John Earhart's book, The Color Printer - a Treatise on the Use of Colors in Typographic Printing, served as the template for the photographic collection, Invariant Plates. This explanatory guide for polygraphists dating from 1892 offers, in addition to descriptions of printing processes, a large number of sample images that illustrate work with colours and raised print production.

Marianne Viero broke down several of these pictures into individual colour layers, and in a darkroom she reconstructed them in the medium of colour photography. Technically speaking she drew from her own basic documentation of books and scans available on the internet. In her subsequent approach she made protective masks for individual colours and their use for multiple exposures of the photo paper to coloured light. It's impossible however to understand the adaptation of one technological process to another as just a complicated path to the most precise photographic reproduction possible. The images don't just go through reconstruction, or perhaps transcription to use a more exact term, from the perspective of medium, but also on the level of meaning. What exactly are these photo replicas of illustrations from a printer's manual? How do we perceive their contant and aesthetic (bound to the intent of the book to a large degree) in the context of contemporary art gallery and mainly after more than one hundred years of radical transformations to the creative arts and design? What spot would we give these photographs on the axis between their recording of phenomenal facts and abstraction? No matter if the first impulse to create Invariant Plates was a fascination with Earhart's unwitting foreshadowing of aesthetic and processes for future art and his exceptional technical production of his book, its media transcription creates, as a result, room for broader contemplation on contemporary visual reality as a layered system of meta-images and references.

Marianne Viem (1979) hails from Denmark. After spending a long time in New York, she moved to Berlin at the start of this year. Photography is an integral part of her multi-faceted work that also includes sculpted objects and installations. Invariant Plates is her first independent exhibit in the Czech Republic. However, we saw her photographs from the Potatoe Prints (2012) collection last year at the collective exhibition, Photography, Recant, that was part of the Prague Biennale Photo 3 (curator: Pavel Vančát).

Jiří Ptáček





















9.11.2014: Dox - This Place

This Place

24th of October - 2nd of March 2015

DOX Gallery

Poupětova 1, Prague 7

Curator: Charlotte Cotton

Opening hours: 
Mon 10 a.m.– 6 p.m.
Tue closed
Wed 11 a.m.– 7 p.m.
Thu 11 a.m.– 9 p.m.
Fri 11 a.m.– 7 p.m.
Sat-Sun 10 a.m.– 6 p.m.

Admission: 180 CZK Adults, 90 CZK reduced


This Place is a monumental artistic endeavor initiated by photographer Frédéric Brenner, who believes that only through the eyes of great artists can we begin to understand the complexities of Israel – its history, its geography, its inhabitants, its daily life – and the resonance it has for people around the world. 

Inspired by historical models that gathered artists to ask essential questions about culture, society and individuals, including the Mission Héliographique in 19th-century France and the Farm Security Administration in the United States, Brenner first conceived the idea for the project in 2006. After seeking the advice of a group of international curators, he invited eleven acclaimed photographers to join him in exploring Israel and the West Bank as both place and metaphor. 

The 12 photographers participating in This Place are Wendy Ewald, Martin Kollar, Josef Koudelka, Jungjin Lee, Gilles Peress, Fazal Sheikh, Stephen Shore, Rosalind Solomon, Thomas Struth, Jeff Wall, Nick Waplington, and Frédéric Brenner himself. Together, this group represents one of the most original and distinguished collections of artists to ever collaborate on a project, and it is certainly the most acclaimed group of photographers to ever turn their attention to Israel and the West Bank.

Each photographer spent approximately six months in residence, pursuing his or her own artistic interests. Through these residencies, which stretched over four years (2009 to 2013), thousands of original art works were created. These images combine to create not a single, monolithic vision, but rather a diverse and fragmented portrait, alive with all the rifts and paradoxes of this important and highly contested place. 

This Place will soon share its collection with audiences around the world. A major traveling exhibition, featuring more than 500 photographs, will open at DOX in October 2014. 

The show is curated by Charlotte Cotton, an internationally recognized curator and former head of the photography department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The exhibition, which will remain on view in Prague until March 2015, will next travel to the Tel Aviv Museum of Art (May 14, 2015 to September 6, 2015). In the fall of 2015, the exhibition will come to the United States, where it will be on view at the Norton Museum of Art (October 15, 2015 to January 15, 2016) and the Brooklyn Museum of Art (February 12, 2016 to June 5, 2016). Additional venues will be announced in the coming months. 

This Place is also publishing 13 books, including a comprehensive catalog to accompany the exhibition, and individual monographs by each participating artist. The first two monographs, Field Trip by Martin Kollar (MACK) and Wall by Josef Koudelka (Aperture) were published in fall 2013. Frederic Brenner’s An Archeology of Fear and Desire (MACK) was published in April 2014, Stephen Shore’s From Galilee to the Negev (Phaidon) in May 2014. Them by Rosalind Solomon was published in July 2014 and Nick Waplington´s Settlement in September 2014. The Thomas Struth´s catalogue, the book by Jungjin Lee Unnamed Road and Wendy Ewald´s This is where I live will be published in November 2014. Remaining books will be published later.
















































Friday, November 14, 2014

13.11.2014 Oldřich Tichý

Oldřich Tichý

I live alone in the woods here

31.10.2014 - 15.2.2015

Prague City Gallery

Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace, Karlova 2, Prague 1

Curator: Hana Larvová

Tue-Sun 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

Admission: 60 CZK full, 30 CZK reduced 



The subject of correlations between the internal and external realities of the natural and human worlds is the key theme of Tichý’s paintings inspired by our everyday environment. A highly individual way of seeing and interpreting it enables him to find in seemingly ordinary, mundane details of nature a potent source of inspiration. His art guides us to an understanding of certain hidden meanings of the world of nature, as well as of the purpose of human existence as its part.



Eaten fish are autumn flowers, 2014


Prayer, 2014


Subtle confession of love, 2014


Mesh, 2014


Night on a thread, 2013


Man, 2013 ; Woman, 2013


Wayside cross, 2013












Friday, November 7, 2014

7.11.2014: Richard Štipl & Josef Zlamal

Richard Štipl a Josef Zlamal

World Premiere: The fantastic world of Richard Štipl and osef Zlamal

17.10.-20.11.2014

dvorak sec conteporary

Dlouhá 5, Praha 1

Admission: free


Gallery dvorak sec contemporary is after three years exhibiting once again Czech-Canadian artist Richard Štipl, a superstar at international art fairs. This time however his exhibition is uniquely associated with the Czech artist-drawer Josef Zlamal. This original exhibition-project in Prague has its world premiere. Afterwards, the exhibition will travel to Berlin and Paris.
"Both artists present their latest and so far unseen work, which was created especially for this exhibition and gallery space," says Olga Dvorak of the exhibition, co-owner of dvorak sec contemporary. "Štipl’s wooden sculptures, which in the artist‘s new creative stage passes to monumentality, which resonates with the precise ink drawings of Josef Zlamal," says Olga Dvorak. The coexistence at first sight of these incompatible objects have their origin in long-term cooperation, which stems from the natural creative dialogue.

Richard Štipl worked on his unique concept of thirty-two heads cast from nine different metals, with his creative efforts culminated on this exhibition. The central piece is a sculptural installation titled Procession, which is an allegory of our times. The work depicts a hyena with the leader, a drunken king riding on his servant, and the procession concludes with an intellectual portrayed as a clown. "This work took the artist three quarters of a year to complete and is also the most expensive work exhibited worth one million Czech crowns," adds Petr Šec, co-owner of dovark sec contemporary.
The work of painter and sculptor Richard Štipl has a strong emotional charge. Štipl works as one of the few contemporary artists with reference to classical European sculpture, which he further develops. "My self-portraits can be seen as a contemporary statement about the extremes of human existence," says the artist, represented by many important private and public collections. Štipl regularly participates in exhibitions and art fairs (Volta Basel, Frieze London, Art Basel Miami). Štipl attributed to his success with participation in international exhibitions such as Decadence Now! in Gallery Rudolfinum or the exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Painter and drawer Josef Zlamal long-term develops the legacy of the classical medieval, his drawings are full of citations and references. Over the years Zlamal developed a unique technique of working with ink on handmade paper. His drawings do not arise spontaneously, on the contrary, he works by a long- term process of layering. "I repeatedly dip my drawings in a water bath and subsequently I wash them out. Part of motives disappear, however the substantial remains, " says the artist, whose works have been presented in the context of prestigious artists Ron Pondicka and Marc Quinn at the Art Fair Contemporary Istanbul 2012.

As a starting point to the platform from which both artists analyze the phenomenon of human destiny, serves as a devotion to the material and technique. In their work they relate to the mixture composed of twisted, distorted beauty, disgust and obscenity, serving not as a means of social criticism or committing violence on viewers, but rather as a voucher towards the interior, where the duality of humanity and monstrosity interconnects. 


Richard Stipl (1968): Mirabilia I, 2014


Richard Stipl (1968): Mirabilia II, 2014


Richard Stipl (1968): Procession, 2014

    Richard Stipl (1968): Procession, 2014
Richard Stipl (1968): Procession, 2014


      


Richard Stipl (1968): Procession, 2014

Richard Stipl (1968): Procession, 2014


Richard Stipl (1968) & Josef Zlaml (1983): Untitled, 2014


Richard Stipl (1968) & Josef Zlaml (1983): Untitled, 2014

Richard Stipl (1968) : Apparition, 2014

Richard Stipl (1968): Derision, 2014

Richard Stipl (1968) : Study of head, 2014

Richard Stipl (1968) : Lust, 2014


Josef Zlaml (1983): Untitled, 2014

Josef Zlaml (1983): Untitled, 2014

Josef Zlaml (1983): Untitled, 2014


Richard Stipl (1968) : Ruda, 2014