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.
Marie Štindlová has been working with the text in the installation for several years, and quite consciously develops sensual descriptions in it. In the current installation, for example, we can enjoy these descriptions: “Sometimes a branch with leaves dampened by a short rain brushes against my bare shoulder... I put my palm on the top of the dark, stained table. The spot was still a little heated from the sunlight... My knees hurt unbearably after a long bus ride; I’ve had it since puberty.” These are small intimate experiences that, as the author herself writes, seem like set pieces or details. We can also find here a parallel to situationist drifting, or the commonplace museum tourist audio guides. The viewer can also just stay to watch and not be attacked by the story or the text, and just enjoy the installation and the space itself in relative silence.
A place of otherness, of everything and nothing, khora, emerges in the exhibition of Tereza Kalousová and Erika Velická in a form referring to the architecture of Greek temples and theatres turning into deserts, or vice versa. Visions of temples of Asclepius where the sick in the company of snakes dreamt up their healing methods are intertwined with memories of real places of inactivity. Moments of emptiness and contemplation. In the heat. To the roar of cicadas. On a peninsula connected to the mainland only by a narrow strip of mud covered with a thin layer of salt. The puffs of wool caught on thorns and sticks and the rolled-out nests under the twisted branches of low trees evoke the presence of sheep, undetermined in time. Here and there the hot air is stirred by the flapping of insect wings, at other times by a refreshing gust from the sea. Every step causes the scampering of a multitude of locusts and the crackling of grass. A lone narrator composes satyr plays in her head.
