Are we inside or outside right now? It´s not perfectly clear. In architecture, distorting of what we see with paint or light effects is a type of visual magic or optical play. Facades are typically adorned with various optical illusions, displaying 3D objects in 2D form and creating new hybrid shapes. In their current exhibition project, Mantichora (Manticore), the authors Martin Herold (*1986) and Pavel Příkaský (*1985) frequently invert these illusory elements. The facade, which we expect to be outside, is situated inside. The painting, which we expect to be inside the frame, is interwoven directly into the walls and used for “holding” the paintings-paintings, which are then, according to the inverting motif, tautologically “framed” by the architectural illusion. Apart from the references to the hybrid mechanism of trompe l'oeil (also known as technique of illusive painting), the authors use here motif of a mythological creature with the combined features of different animals. With the head of a human, body of a lion and a tail of venomous spines or wings of a bat, Manticores produce sounds resembling soft music of a flute. Pavel Příkaský captures them in more variations on a wall painting, a painting or a space installation as simplified zoomorphic motifs typically known from the reliefs, architectural details or sculptures.
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 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 initial and final motif of Michal Žilinský ́s exhibition is a zero milestone. This takes place moment after an apocalypse, at the Earth without people, at the place, where different physical rules apply. This is the author ́s fourth CGI animation, centred around a fictitious virtual environment. The so-called Zone is inspired by both abandoned and magical place of Andrei Tarkovski and masters of classic sci-fi – Strugatski brothers. In Fragment 0, the author goes beyond: teases the viewer, shakes their confidence, mystifies. He chooses one object from the ambivalent Zone and hides its identity under the destruction signs of time and also visual play – under trompe l'oeil. At the same time, he follows his characteristic style as it was his brand: epic hyperrealism, references to chiaroscuro and almost magical symbolics could be seen in most of his previous works. Into his latest project, the author also inweaves commercial strategies known from pop culture, more pronounced than in previous works. This is highlighted mainly by camera work, music (the author is Tomáš Moravanský, performer and musician) or by formal references to the genre of videogame introduction. The inanimate object of his interest becomes hero- Frankenstein, commodified by same lascivious visual references like he ever lived. The ruin is depicted as a breakdown of matrix – clearly defined system – undermining the untenability of modern strict pragmatism. The ruin and its fragments were however created thanks to conflict of human relations, thanks to the catastrophe caused by humans. The author then, by his installation refers not only to the extinction of the world and its original purpose but also to its legitimate contradictions. If using a 3D hyperrealistic moving image can blur borders of reality and fiction, then integration of hyperrealistic drawing, which is on the contrary most tradeable artefact of the exhibition, forces us to the absolute relativization. What if then, by words of most popular 90 ́s ufologist Erich von Däniken, doomsday had already happened?
Tomáš Pavlacký is a graduate of Michal Gabriel’s sculpture studio at the Brno Faculty of Fine Arts. His area of interest (as is the case with many of his classmates) naturally falls within the field of 3D modeling and 3D printing. But if a spectator expects from his work and from the exhibition in the Galerie mladých a typical obsession with technology and processes showing what more 3D printing can do, they will probably be disappointed. Because of a moderate approach, he completely suppresses the characteristic aesthetics of digital models. In the current installation, he abandons previous methods of materializing pseudorandom virtual errors based on information transfer. He works with a basic shape growing into structures that evoke biological or mineralization processes.
![Tussock [Trs]](/files/2021/01/pavlacky_07_p4a9658-1.jpg)
The very first exhibition of a Berlin artist and graphic designer, Andreas Töpfer (born 1971), in the Czech Republic has the characteristic of an interim retrospective. Based on the author´s rich archive, it supports the wide range of using the drawing as a medium. There are mostly memos of everyday life, noted on A4-sized office papers or A5-sized in notebooks and illustrations, often vector or vectorised, with different extent of relation to the text. For Andreas Töpfer, drawing is an integral part of one’s identity, memory and a documentation of individual history. Inspecting the author´s archive is like looking into his mind with the option of re-playing his thoughts. To him, drawing primarily represents a method and a metaphorical backbone of thinking process. This “solid ground under your feet” or “backbone of thinking” is also a creative source of all his projects aimed at the utilitarian field: creation of books, magazines or running his own publishing house. All of this, in cooperation with contemporary artists, writers and philosophers. At the same time, the author´s position remains autonomous. Hence, thanks to Andreas Töpfer, the utilitarian field expands the discursive realm of contemporary art. The author himself claims that when he creates, he does not illustrate a text, but develops an independent visual language with its own universe. Each of his drawings communicates a messages almost at textual level. Speculative poetics, which covers also Anreas Töpfer´s works, is a linguistic laboratory researching literature and poems. Töpfer published a book called Speculative Drawing 2011-2014 (2014) together with philosopher Armen Avanessian. Amongst other Töpfer´s prominent projects belongs the creation of a magazine and travelling exhibition The Origin Of Senses (2015), realized in cooperation with Sabine Scho. He and Daniela Seel founded a publishing house, called kookbooks in 2013, where he illustrated and made graphics for more than 80 books. Andreas´s works presented at this exhibition form a cross section of this part of author´s ouvre, and it also features his visual dairies containing thousands of drawings.
In the centre of Martina Holá´s project The Dog´s Days lays the analysis of a lost dog case, which has recently been in the media spotlight. By this seemingly banal situation, the author pointed out the omnipresent risk of human tendency to fall for emotional illusions. Holá also speculates about various opinions on the event itself. By revealing this contradiction of perspectives, the author opens up questions about nature of the objective truth. At the same time, she searches for ideal construction of a metaphorical fable, which spreads as a present folk tale. A performing rescue fire brigade, an organised fall of rocks, an animated caricature of the main character in this story – the lost dog, all these are parts of mosaic of complex environment created in the space of gallery. The hyperbole is achieved by exaggerating the elementary animation principles, simple performative etudes and deconstructing of film medium. Its aim is to highlight the subjectivity of creating representations of reality and the distortion of human perception.
Only place, about which we can say with certainty, that there´s life, is the planet Earth. Smart cities may in the future float on the water and fly through the universe. The life has bounced into the ability of producing dynamic lift power at many occasions, but the wings stay still important. God´s Work is a metaphorical initiation of flight, in which you can experience this uplift and beauty of nature in its rawness. The ability to absorb it and inability to bring this experience to gallery space were the main impulse for creation of this large-scale project. The exhibition is a journey here. It is possible to see it also from Taoist point of view, where the journey itself becomes both goal and work. All the traditional principles of the gallery organisation are disrupted and revaluated. Accompanying programs of the exhibition, are an equivalent or even main part of the project. “Journey” in the exhibition involves visits of artists, who work with and in the nature, and also of the artists, who only observe nature and install it in the aseptic gallery space, which has also transformed into one of many journeys. Contrast of the artificial and natural is what allures us. The inaccuracy of place, time and experience. The accuracy of the moment. The ability to perceive now and here, to share without words, to contextualise without manipulation. Nature is form of both body and spiritual cleansing. The project does not have ordinary curator, nor the architect, it is a live socio-system, which acts on both layers – the exhibition as an experience superior to the anesthetisation of nature against the nature as a product of art and discourse.
Similar program can be found on gallery website and Facebook profile.
In her Tumbleweed project, Eva Rybářová focuses on questions of seemingly intimate feeling of ungraspable impulses, which in fact lead to shared, often generic and much generalized aesthetic symbols. In the strict sense, the author compares the use of basic English as a possible poetic language and the deconstruction of images from the photobanks. For her, a photobank presents a visual archive defining common criteria of the mainstream aesthetic values. She works similarly with sound and typography banks. Using branched rows of allusions, she refers to romantic motive of exploring the relationship between the individual and their environment and world as to a functional device for studying the nature of contemporary life in a developed country. Main secret to immersing into the depths of the Tumbleweed exhibition structures is the understanding of poetic experiment. In the collection of poems with same title, the author uses basic English as a standardized aesthetic language free from nuances needed for individual identification. She construes real experience with technology, globalisation or the Internet, so that she can reveal to what extent our experiences are same, or how little of same sources are needed, so that we come to different conclusions.
We are oversaturated with visual perceptions and stimuli. They attack us from around every corner, lure us and pull our gazes, flow into us from an infinite number of screens. We find in them the culprit of the distraction of our attention, the feeling of wasted time and any dissatisfaction in our lives. We get carried away with them on endless escalators of trends that take us nowhere. The logical counter-movement is then stopping the view, slowing down the time, fixing the frame, turning off the zoom. We apply the emergency brake and, despite the interest in the necessary minimum of basic communication or imaging procedures, we get not only the essence of photography or photographic effect, but also the tangibly beautiful, which we are not afraid to relate to (despite all the overcrowding and cynicism). Conscious use of the simplest photographic principles (such as shallow depth of field) seems to paradoxically return lost contours to photography. Maybe it's time to bring the term "photogeny" back into play. Give it new contents. For example, touching by sight.
In her project Plan – DELTA, Daniela Ponomarevová works with a fictional post-apocalyptic event responding to the state of civilization. Objects, you may see in exhibition, represent fragments, segments or remnants of the ejected module, which detached from the space colonization ship DELTA due to the explosion. The project tells a story about the supposed demise of the Earth, which in recent years has become only a test object, a temporary place for humanity, which inevitably awaits destruction by a huge asteroid. This catastrophic cliché is used here deliberately, the fall of an asteroid represents inevitability and power beyond human capabilities.
Daniel Nováček is a student at the Intermedia Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts (Brno Technology University of Technology). He utilizes the devices of film language and video installation and by using his own metaphorical language he processes current social topics in a manner that endows the generally accepted critical perspectives with an innovative psychological insight into the issues.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the legendary Galerie mladých in Brno. There is no more appropriate format than a performance to celebrate this type of institution. However, it is not about performances as an artistic genre, but about the performative concept, which will be the subject of this year’s open call. The Open Call paraphrases this typical dramaturgical practice and its history, as it has probably had as long an existence as the gallery’s open call program. What is usually closed behind the office door will this time take place in public: the selection committee will discuss the submitted projects directly in the gallery and, moreover, will allow interested artists to comment on their own projects “on the spot”, as was once the case in Galerie mladých.
Devadesátá léta jsou – možná už zbytečně – chápana jako „bílé místo na mapě“, jemuž nebyla věnována dostatečná odborná pozornost a které ještě nebylo adekvátně zhodnoceno. Pocit této nedostatečnosti podporuje fakt, že devadesátky představují zlomové období, které zásadně zformovalo současný výtvarný provoz; že se jedná o období radikální a „nenávratné“ proměny kulturní produkce a distribuce. Tehdejší dění se stalo argumentačním klíčem dneška, stejně jako objektem retro nostalgie i mnohokrát převyprávěných legend.
Galerie TIC nejsou sbírkotvornou institucí se stálou expozicí – realizují paralelní soustavy krátkodobých výstav. V rychlém programovém sledu tak zůstává trvalou právě jen nestálost a permanentní mizení. Výstava „Výběr ze sbírky“ je (intuitivní) reakcí na tento provoz: komentuje sběratelství, archivaci a muzejnictví.
Výstava Kataríny Hládekové je první z připravované výstavní série, které se zabývají zobrazováním a vnímáním. Autorčiným klíčovým pojmem je model jako schéma objektu, ideje nebo jevu, na což se soustředí kontinuálně už od svých magisterských studií na FaVU VUT. Projekt pojednává o virtuálním internetovém prostoru, v němž jsou obrazy opakovaně redukované a zploštělé, a to jak doslovně, neboť podstatou fotografie, tvořící většinu obrazů na internetu, je zobrazovat prostor na ploše, tak abstraktněji – komprimací digitálních formátů a přizpůsobováním zobrazení formátu monitoru. S tím souvisí také ztráta autorství, k níž dochází mnohovrstevným prolinkováním, kdy se vystopování původu obrazů stává nemožným i bezpředmětným. Přítomný kinetický objekt představuje modelovou situaci obrazů na internetu, které jsou přizpůsobovány formátu počítačového okna a které lze posouvat jen po omezené trajektorii. Zploštělost a fragmentárnost jsou vyjádřeny jednoduchou metaforou válce, naznačujícího obrazovou a prostorovou redukci jak v rámci omezeného zobrazení uloženého textu, tak v rámci jeho stlačování, které opakujeme a stvrzujeme pohybem celého mechanismu.
Od 23. 9. 2014 proběhne v Galerii mladých výstava studentů Střední školy umění a designu, stylu a módy a Vyšší odborné školy Brno slavící tento rok 90. výročí založení. V průběhu pěti týdnů se formou krátkých výstav postupně představí sedm oborů školy sídlících v budově na Husově ulici (bývalá ŠUŘka): Ilustrace, Malířství, Nová média, Design interiéru, Grafický design, Produktový design, Fotografie a média. Každá z výstav bude zahájena vernisáží a celý blok bude doplněn doprovodným programem v podobě přenesení vybraných vyučovacích hodin odborných předmětů do prostoru galerie. Návštěvníci galerie budou moci tímto způsobem nahlédnout do live vyučovacího procesu.
Z rozmanitých obsahů, které lze s kategorií „práce“ spojovat, se soustředíme především na její introspektivní rovinu: na promýšlení a posuzování vlastní činnosti. Autor si je svým čtenářem, divákem i metodologem a arbitrem. Jako „práci“ pravidelně označujeme texty, umělecké projekty a artefakty, čímž příznačně posouváme důraz od samotného výsledku směrem k otevřenému procesu vzniku. Vystavený soubor zahrnuje různé referenční přístupy „myslím na to, jak myslím“, „myslím na to, jak pracuji“. Představuje emoční postoje k vlastní práci, komentáře k jejím metodám a postupům, a to jak v abstrahovaných formách, tak v proklamacích nebo poetických metaforách. Jedná se o jakési pohledy do zrcadla, které odráží naši touhu i skepsi vůči smysluplným činům.
Katarína Hládeková has been focusing on the life story of Russian emigrant Matrena Makovická, who in the 1920s followed her husband, writer and doctor Dušan Makovický to Slovakia to live in seclusion after his suicide. Over the course of three years, the artist produced a series of exhibitions that, through Matrena’s fate, commented on issues of national identity, the stigma of emigration and the social status of the “woman of a great man”. Another possible interpretation of the turbulent life vicissitudes of Matrena and Dušan Makovický, who met as members of a community of followers of Leo Tolstoy’s teachings, concerns the disappointment of not being able to fulfill one's own ideals and convictions. Tolstoyism can be understood as a determination to live an authentic life based on the values of love, social justice, harmony with nature and faith, and a consistent rejection of social conventions. Similar values, incidentally, are embodied in contemporary ethical appeals to environmental responsibility and social emancipation. Katarína’s reflection does not slip into a one-sided or romanticizing interpretation or redressing of wrongs but hints at the complexity and ambiguity of the story, its actors, and the social climate of the time. The current exhibition takes Matrena’s story even further beyond its original historical starting point. With the participation of Václav Magid, it includes a commentary on those who create an interpretation of the world and its laws from historical realities, of which Matrena may be a part who approach this activity with great seriousness, even pathos, but also with anguish. Here the actor in the story and its possible narrator meet. What is remarkable is how close they are.
