Trin Alt, Tobias Izsó, Layo Laurence Mussi
Trompe L'oeil is an artistic technique that affects the viewer's perception through optical illusions (necessarily, for example, by making a flat image appear three-dimensional). The artists are interested in both historical frameworks and contemporary visual manifestations, both in building spatial illusion and heightening perception, and in entertaining simple but still effective "magic". To do so, they use various media and technological formats such as airbrush murals, text or sculptural reliefs.
Dana Balážová, Eva Brodská, Lucie Kralíková and Petr Švolba
The connecting element of the exhibition is the elemental life-giving element and magical symbol preserved for many ages - fire. A functional furnace and rising smoke will become the focal point of the exhibition. The shared experience of many a loud (or silent) prayer can be a connection to ancestors present, future and past in one precious time. In the gallery installation, tapestries, a moving image, and clumps of plants will come together, waiting to be burned in communal gatherings. The artists dedicate these to three themes: winning friendships, summoning rain, and divinatory and prophetic dreams.
D'epog, Marie Šprincl a Matěj Sýkora
Blood, love, sex, tears, dancing, lipstick, booze, country, axes, stetsons and klondykes, white wigwam in the dark night, gender-balanced cowboys and cowgirls, CENTAUR GIRL BOSS, immaculate conception, pregnant Radim, Zuzana chopping wood, Magda's hips to the rhythm of the hula hoop, Janet's pearls to the pigs, Lucia's tears, Zdenda's Powerpoint, Matyáš on the mower, Marie Šprincl and Matěj Sýkora.
Šimon Chovan
Šimon Chovan's exhibition project Almanac of Wounds presents his diploma work. It adheres to a strong material sensibility, combining organic substances such as beeswax and ochre pigment in contrast with inorganic ones such as metal or silicone. She casts, cuts, dissolves and stages her objects into complex, organized wholes that resemble structures and systems of various types: human, natural or artificial. This visual narrative creates a fictional vision in which the present meets the future, the personally acquired (such as the soil and wax from the artist's birthplace) meets the prefabricated. This singular sculptural practice touches on many contemporary themes such as environmentalism, the Anthropocene, the irreversibility of new technologies, and alliances, all of which are relevant to Chovan, but within this project the artist also focuses on the interdisciplinary concept of plasticity as defined by French philosopher Catherine Malabou - as a fundamental operation, a reciprocal overlapping of form between the empirical (or material) and the noetic (or mind); the ability to crystallize form as well as destroy it.
Markéta Slaná
Celé zasazení filmu je situováno do prostoru Vrchního soudu v Praze, který se stává pomyslnou stagí pro zkoumání symptomů současného kulturního neklidu. Soudní síň sama o sobě symbolizuje dynamické prostory, které zahrnují silné mezilidské a společenské dynamiky a vyznačují se jasnou hierarchií moci. Prostor je okupován čtyřmi performery, kteří vykonávají gesta jako šepot, příprava na řeč, přísaha, či snaha neúspěšně posouvat rigidní architekturu. Protagonisté jakoby byly aktéry a zároveň pozorovateli, pomyslná NPCs, která uvízla v soudní síni, co se neustále připravují na projev a vyprávění, k němuž ale nikdy nedojde. Vlna neoliberalismu vedla k erozi historického vědomí, rozostřila hranice mezi minulostí, přítomností a budoucností, a zanechala nás ve stavu zmatku a estetického chaosu. Pronásledují nás ztracené budoucnosti, které byly slíbeny, ale nikdy nepřišly. Co tedy zůstane, když historicita zmizí? Je to vibe. Je na čase nemít žádný program, je čas prostě jen vibovat. vibe je to, co zůstává, když všechno ostatní už zmizelo. Video čerpá inspiraci z kolektivních zkušeností, internetové kultury, sdílených deníků, vlastní choreografické praxe, principů disciplinace i emocionálního vyjádření. Cílem práce je vytvořit komplexní lyrickou situaci, která zkoumá osobní zranitelnost a zároveň zobrazuje bizarní situace jako prostředek k pochopení aktivních vztahů a společenských hranic.
Lucie Rosenfeldová
The exhibition project How to (Not) Remember Our Bodies is the outcome of a long-term artistic research on the topic of body memory in the field of reproductive medicine. The exhibition will include a newly produced film by the artist focusing on both the specific individual and collective experiences of reproductive medicine and its historical and political conditioning. It will thus build on the previous film, Uteruses and Brains, which was part of an exhibition at the Kurzor gallery curated by Jan Zálešák in 2022. In contrast to the previous film, the new film will draw on the subjective experiences of women participants in reproductive medicine in the context of Czech and Czechoslovak gynaecology, as well as historical material obtained from the NFA's medical film archive, information gathered from research at the Medical Museum in Prague, and ongoing consultations with experts in the field of bodily memory.
Karolina Raimund
Karolina Raimund (formerly Kohoutková) is an artist, curator and educator whose artistic and pedagogical practice has long focused on body design and performance, addressing feminist and queerness themes.Identitarian issues related to corporeality in her work are complemented by environmentally engaged projects. These levels are interconnected in Karolina's upcoming exhibition, which takes as its starting point an artistic intervention in the landscape that is linked to a specific place, a 3600 m2 farmland in South Moravia, which is still listed as the property of the artist's late great-grandmother. This field is part of one large whole and is thus cultivated in a similar way to the communist regime. The monoculture area is currently made up of smaller plots of land owned by several owners, which are visible only in the drawing on the cadastral map. It is almost as if they did not exist. Karolína decided to remove her great-grandmother's piece of land from this "role", so that her great-grandmother's field would be both a mediator and a pretext for haptic exploration and understanding of the landscape in its former and ideally perhaps future form. The artwork will be based on classical agrarian practice and will thematise the different phases of land care. The project is based on the need to "experience oneself"; to tune in to the life of a great-grandmother. It also stems from the fear that the earth will become even more toxic in the future.It thus builds on the ideas and practice of ecofeminism and highlights the imbalance of human and natural forces. The work will run as a longer term project respecting the natural cycle and will be presented as a sensory exhibition finding partial responses to the character and iconography of the territory through art. Field Revival will be in consultation with a member of staff from the Silva Tarouca Research Institute for Landscape and Ornamental Horticulture, a public research institution.
