Thursday, January 29, 2015

29.1.2015 Jiří Černický

Jiří Černický

Real minimalism

16.1.2014 - 27.2.2015

Atelier of Josef Sudek

Újezd 30, Praha 1

Curator: Pavel Vančát

Admission: 10 Kč, students of art schools free

(...) What Černický presents to us here in such an impressive range and variance can be seen as a high-spirited traveler’s pun, but those more sensitive among us this can also uncover a global conspiracy of the modern order. It is actually a perfectly crystallized paranoia of today’s globetrotter – and Černický likes to get carried away by paranoia, building his stories and projects on it. The image of civilization as a global organism that spans the planet from his home in Prague’s district of Libeň (one snapshot represents the World Cafeteria made famous by the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, located a minute from Černický’s studio) through Tibet to Arizona. The exact locations, however, soon become irrelevant; the occurrence of objects grows into a pandemic. Anonymous absurd shoots of civilization thus become the fauna of the 21st century, a species related to each other, but appearing in another form and mutation with each occurrence.

(…) Asking the artist about the real clear origin and the meaning of it all directly would not only be cowardly, but above all it would negate the very meaning of the whole project, which just like most of his works oscillates somewhere between science and a fairy-tale. From this perspective, the question whether it is reality or fantasy is really pointless. Černický is simply trying to prove figuratively that our own civilization has long since surpassed nature by its ability to recreate itself. The world is only a constantly and repeatedly implemented fiction, in which we are the aliens to ourselves.

Pavel Vančát

(excerpt from the text Real minimalism or global paranoia?, 2013)

Friday, January 23, 2015

23.1.2015 Milan Salák

Milan Salák

Transformets

9.1.2014 - 1.3.2015

Václav Špála Gallery

Národní 30, Prague 1

Opening hours: daily 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.

Admission: 40 Kč full, 20 Kč reduced (students), free for seniors and art students

Hey Milan,
I’ve got just one question (all the other ones are secondary and stem from it in fact). My question is, why is it that you don’t paint? You yourself claim that you’re good at it, and I think you’re a brilliant painter. Is that why? Do you really not have any topics, stories, fixed ideas or fleeting memories from past lives, visions, dreams, bizarre thoughts? There’s always what to paint, or isn’t there?
I have a feeling that a lot of people “create‟ in trendy ways because they simply don’t know how to paint. And it’s these people (including those who never painted or never painted well) that I sometimes hear claiming that painting is over. So they take pictures, make videos and installations...
So why isn’t someone like you, who has such a gift, making use of it and developing it. I don’t get it. I dare even disagree beforehand with what you might say, that you are in fact painting. Undoubtedly, we could argue about what makes or doesn’t make a painting or what no longer constitutes a painting. When I’m asking you why you don’t paint, I’m asking why you aren’t using painting as a means to express the feelings I’ve mentioned. Why are you concerned in such a considerably conceptual way with “mere“ technology and the aesthetic possibilities of the material used secondly or the material that’s primarily a support?

Thanks,
Pavel

Hey Pavel,
I don’t know! I don’t want to introduce arguments concerning the evolution of art or how one (or everyone) ought to perceive the painterly gesture (as much as I think that even about that matter I can declare that it, too, is something “I know how to do“).
If it’s possible to know how to paint and at the same time not be a painter, then it’s probably my case. I don’t exactly know why it happened that way, but it definitely has something to do with the fact that I’m finding pleasure where I wouldn’t be able to as a painter.
The fact that, in the end, I’m moving around with instruments which are normally used for painting isn’t enough for me to convince myself that what’s at stake is painting, let alone art. Similarly, the fact that in some of my things you can see what’s being depicted doesn’t mean they’re paintings, let alone quality paintings.
I think that the judging of what I’m actually doing has to be done by someone else. I feel bad about not being able to answer your one question in words. I don’t, however, think it’s that important whether I’m painting or not. I believe that if what I’m doing brings me pleasure, that it’ll then bring pleasure to others as well. Whereas with painting the most important person is the painter, with the image the deciding factor is the viewer.

Thanks,
Milan

Švýcarka, 2014.

Alpská pěšina, 2014

Vedle zrcadla, 2014

Ríša, paní a křídlo, 2012-2014

Protoanděl, 2014

Oslava ke složení husarské zkoušky 1 (barokní varianta), 2O14

Oslava ke složení husarské zkoušky 1 (ze série "Poslední kopie z kopie Josefiny Mutzenbacher 2"), 2O14

Oslava ke složení husarské zkoušky 5 (ze série "Poslední kopie z kopie Josefiny Mutzenbacher 2"), 2O14

Hickory, 2014

Lesbická studie 2, 2014

Popular 2, 2014

22.1.2015 Josef Bolf

Josef Bolf

Heavy Planet

20.12.2014 - 14.2.2015

hunt kastner gallery

Bořivojova 85, Prague 3

Curator: Jiří Ptáček

Open: mon-sun closed, tue-fri 1 p.m. - 6 p.m., sat 2 p.m. - 6 p.m.

Admission: free

Josef Bolf's solo exhibition presents a series of new work including an animated film, paintings, drawings and collages. As a young boy, bolf loved the sci-fi anthology "Heavy Planet" and he recently gave the same title to his autobiographical text, which then developed into the short animated film of the same name. In this new series of work, Bolf returns to the housing estate of the 1980s, to his own flights and anxieties. He tells of things that he cannot change but they keep coming on their own. More than ever before, however, we are giving free reign to the fact that an encounter with Bolf's art is always an encounter with an excerpt from one narrative. The costumes change, but the actors remain the same. They march forward, but in a circle; sticky asphalt beneath their feet, above their heads the starry sky.

22.1.2015 Václav Kopecký

Václav Kopecký

Petrification

9.1.2014 - 21.2.2015

Drdova Gallery

Křižkovského 10, Prague 3

Curator: Hana Budeus

Opening hours: Tue - Fri 1p.m. – 6 p.m., Sat. 2p.m. – 6 p.m.

Admission: free

Václav Kopecký exhibits exhibition. The exhibition with the same name took place in the summer in House of Art in České Budějovice. Moreover the viewer has opportunity to meet the exhibition at Drdova Gallery only through different links: : early catalog with several reproductions, photos which were took down and exposed porcelain of Antonín Tomášek. The author works here with the history of a particular exhibition, which not only was, but at the same time is. It shows us situation after taking down the exhibition and at the same time just before the opening, when the author is engaging in photographs in several levels at once. He refers to reproductions using title of the exhibition that nature creates itself exposed to reproducible porcelain castings that are in a certain sense, the original and copies simultaneously, and finally to catalog photo used in the form of documentation of the exhibition, which is no longer. When Václav was explaining his intention to me, I imagined various empty galleries in art history that I know them of course only indirectly, from photos and books: e.g. Yves Klein, who in the late fifties exhibited "nothingness" in a Paris gallery, but also to George Brecht and his presentation "Three Chair Events" in Martha Jackson gallery in New York. Maybe the shop window to the street, as is shown in the photo documentation, reminds somehow of Lucie Drdová Gallery . As it seems obvious, concrete realization of the original idea played an important role, which was strongly influenced by the space and the audience. Now imperfection final version, limited real-world conditions, it may be interesting for us today. Therefore, at the end of this exhibition, the empty gallery is just one level of the exhibition, but certainly not the intended result. Not to be ambitious gesture, but only a conscious effort to use the resources that are available.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

13.1.2015 Milan Grygar

Milan Grygar

The Visual and the Acoustic

17.12.2014 - 5.4.2015

Prague City Gallery, Municipal Library

Mariánské Square 98/1, Prague 1

Curator: Hana Larvová

Opening hours: Tu-Sun 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Admission: 120 Kč full, 60 Kč reduced

In his work, Milan Grygar (*1926) has continuously focused on the relationship between image, sound and space. There, his concept is thoroughly original and indeed, unique in the context of contemporary art. Rather than relating to the domestic art scene, it brings his idiom close to the current trends prevailing in European and American art.

The current retrospective shows Grygar’s output on a time-scale ranging from the mid-1960s, when he fi rst linked the realization of an art work with spatial attributes of sound, to the present stage, during which his individual way of combining visual and acoustic aspects of art work has been acquiring new dimensions.