Come Over When You're Sober

Galerie U Dobrého pastýře 05 08 — 28 02
opening — 04 08 2020 17:30

The exhibition project Come Over When You're Sober is the second part of the series Becoming a Girl, which takes as its theme the character of a (young) girl as we can meet her in works by Tiqqun (1999), Deleuze and Guattari (1980), or Witold Gombrowitze (1937). The aim of the cycle is to present the character of a young girl as a conscious and unintended guide in confrontation with the difficulties of today's world, against the background of the works of the young generation of Czech artists. 

The character of a young girl testifies to problems such as self-identification, even perverse pressure on our body-image, consumerist lifestyle or apathy, "pseudo-activity" and the inability to face current challenges. Its existence can be traced in the very life of artists, in the presentation of their works or in the online sharing of images of themselves. We come across the forms, gestures, plots and folds of a young girl not only in targeted work with their own experience, body, performance or self-portrait, but also in the necessary self-presentation and self-reformative strategies that artists use outside of creative production.

Since these activities are closely connected with social life on the net, we also ask about the position in which the real human body finds itself in after part of its identity separates from it. We are interested in how the technology and biology of emotions creep into this algorithm-controlled process, and how the knowledge that adrenaline, dopamine, serotonin, or oxytocin biologically constitute all of our emotions is reflected in the shape of our identities. Where does the power to "curate" our identity through the care of our avatar lead us and what specifically do we substitute by "curating" our (trapped in the body) emotions through narcotics.