Sculpture in the Streets Brno Art Open 2011

Transcription

1 Sculpture in the Streets Brno Art Open (2011) In the public spaces of Brno The exhibition curator is Karel Císař The State of Things The third annual exhibition Sculpture in the Streets Brno Art Open 2011 follows on from the aim of the previous two years, developing the theme of graphic art and its function in the public space. This year however differs through its attempt to make a systematic reassessment of all three of the fundamental components of this kind of exhibition format the roles of the art, the space and the viewer. Under art, the exhibition tries to present the widest possible spectrum of expressive means that can be included in an exhibition of this kind. For this reason we in particular approached male and female artists of the younger and middle generation whose works cross over the traditional definition of artistic disciplines and who move freely between different means of expression. From the spatial perspective, locations were chosen which - in spite of their position in the historic part of the city - are not for the most part on the main roads and demonstrate the exceptional stratification of the Brno urban space. If a traditionally placed statue usually designates a location of historical memory, the interceding works of contemporary art by contrast point out the possibilities that a given location may have in the future. With this is associated the third, central axis of the exhibition, the viewers - their relationship to a place and a work of art, and especially the question of what role art can play in the life of the individual and of society. On 10 th June 2011, after preparations lasting more than a year, there will be a gala opening for fifteen new works from fourteen artists, including one artistic collective. These are: Filip Cenek, Barbora Klímová, Eva Koťátková, Dominik Lang, Christoph Meier (Austria), Markéta Othová, Jiří Příhoda, Rafani, Jiří Skála, Matej Smetana, Adéla Svobodová, Jan Šerých, Michal Škoda and Jiří Thýn. The exhibition curator is Karel Císař In a wide spectrum of expressive means, from installations and architectural interventions, via sound and light shows, painting and photography, through to social projects and performances, the exhibition tries to establish dialogue with the locations for which it was created. In some cases the artists enter into the city infrastructure and disturb the free flow of communications, on other occasions they in contrast actually bring residents and visitors to places which for a variety of reasons are normally inaccessible. On a number of occasions they try to focus attention on a specific location or building. However for this year's exhibition, time is as important as place, since installations, film projects, performances and a social project all with a temporal aspect to them have been included, demanding active involvement from viewers who have some experience of art in the public space, thanks to the previous exhibitions. This permits them a new view of the place where they live, and of each other. The broadly expanded field in which this year's Sculpture In The Streets - Brno Art Open 2011 exhibition operates thus makes a theme out of the internal bond between artistic development and the development of society. If the subheading The State of Things was chosen for this year, this is not only to express an understanding of a work of art as a thing among other things, including its fragility and transience, but also to express through these characteristics the talented state of contemporary society. By the same token in contrast, the new state of things experimented on by art should reflect the options for a change in the state of society. Karel Císař

2 Exhibitors Filip Cenek Born 1976 in Jeseník, lives and works in Brno. Exhibitions and festivals: Centre Pompidou, Paris; EMAF, Osnabruck; NIVAF, Nagano. Cinema, 2011 the former Kapitol cinema, Divadelní 3 (49 11'41.876"N, 16 36'50.779"E) // Tuesday - Friday 10am 6pm With his work entitled Cinema Filip Cenek returns to the new defunct Kapitol cinema, where he used to work as a projectionist. The cinema was located in the important modernist Morava palace, designed by architect Arnošt Wiesner. Cenek's film installation gives the building back, at least for a short time, its original function and shows that a public space need not of necessity be an external space. In his ambient film he uses fleeting shots to show viewers their city as a hidden, sonorous landscape which resists conventional classification. Barbora Klímová Born 1977, lives and works in Brno. Winner of the Jindřich Chalupecký Prize for Exhibitions: Salzburger Kunstverein, Salzburg; Museum of Art, Seoul; Manifesta 7. Crosscultural Guide, 2011 Presentations in the House of Arts, walks through the city (49 11'46.820"N, 16 36'52.719"E) // 12 th June, 2pm / 13 th June, 10.45am / 17 th June, 3pm /20 th June, 2pm / 25 th June, 2pm /26 th June, 3pm / 27 th June, 1pm / 29 th June,10am /2 nd July,12noon /4 th July, 4pm / 5 th July, 3pm / 8 th July 2011, 11am The starting point for Barbora Klímová's social project was the "samizdat" guide to Czechoslovakia put together at the start of the 1980s by Wendy W Luers, the wife of the-then US Ambassador, to meet the needs of foreign visitors. With the help of a widely varied group of foreign residents of Brno Klímová has prepared a series of commented walks which provide other residents with a different view of the city and will form the basis of an intercultural guide.

3 Eva Koťátková Born 1982, lives and works in Prague. Winner of the Jindřich Chalupecký Prize for Exhibitions: Secession, Vienna; Tate Liverpool; Meyer Riegger, Karlsruhe. Lost and Found, 2011 Lužánky, by Pionýrská (49 12'26.990"N, 16 36'26.249"E) // 8am 6pm Through her installation in the form of an imposing artificial rock, access to which is gained through wooden doors, Eva Koťátková broaches the delicate boundary between the natural and the artificial, and between the personal and the public. Inside the rock viewers are confronted with a sound installation whose disjointed dialogues - to be progressively changed during the course of the exhibition - allow them a glimpse into the disintegrating world of the elderly. Dominik Lang Born 1980, lives and works in Prague. Representing the Czech Republic this year at the 54 th Venice Biennale. Exhibitions: Centre Pompidou, Paris; Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw; Moravia Gallery in Brno. Wall, 2011 corner of Kobližná and Sukova (49 11'43.323"N, 16 36'45.687"E) With his plan to block off a busy shopping street in the city centre with an imposing wall, Dominik Lang achieves a strong effect of alienation in which passers-by, hindered in their free passage by the wall, are aware of the layout of the urban space and their everyday movements within it. The work attempts in a non-metaphorical and purely physical way to bring residents to reflect on the place in which they live. Christoph Meier Born in 1980, lives and works in Vienna (Austria). Exhibitions: Secession, Vienna; Kunsthaus Graz; Kumho Art Museum, Seoul. Untitled (Olbram Zoubek), 2011 terrace next to the International Hotel (49 11'43.178"N, 16 36'18.900"E) This installation by young Austrian artist Christoph Meier is based on a detailed survey of the Brno urban layout. During this Meier was taken with the blue building tarpaulin which covered up an early work by major Czech sculpture Olbram Zoubek during building work in front of the Hotel Continental. So what was originally to have been used only as protection for a sculpture,

4 for Meier became a work of art in its own right. Following agreement with the building's owner, the tarpaulin was moved to Vienna, where the artist developed a new structural support for it, then returned and placed it in front of a different hotel, but in a very similar position in architectural terms, where it creates an open sculptural form. Markéta Othová Born 1968 in Brno, lives and works in Prague. Winner of the Jindřich Chalupecký Prize for Exhibitions: The Photographers Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Basel; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. The Pass, 2011 Reverse face of the Obilní trh tramstop (49 11'54.156"N, 16 35'50.963"E) The of Markéta Othová takes her creative method to the extreme, where individual pictures only function when take together, as an installation specific to a location. The black and white photographs, which show two identical, but of course mirror images of a mountain pass, make a theme of the internal layout of the small-scale modernist structure on which they are mounted and by contrast point out its present dreary condition. Jiří Příhoda Born 1966 in Jihlava, lives and works in Prague. Winner of the Jindřich Chalupecký Prize for Exhibitions: Busan Biennále, Korea; Kunsthalle Krems, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden. Interior I. passage by the International Hotel (49 11'41.281"N, 16 36'21.457"E) This architectural intervention by Jiří Příhoda makes use of a marble slab in the passage at the International Hotel as the basis for developing a sterile interior lit from above, separated from the outside by a glass panel. This milieu on the edge of an emptied shop window and a residence inappropriately opened up to the eyes of the public leaves the onlooker to consider what within the city is exposed to our view and how the observers become the observed.

5 Rafani Artistic collective, founded in Exhibitions: Galerie Klatovy/Klenová; Kunstverein Springhornhof, Neuenkirchen;BWA Wroclaw. Garden Installation, 2011 building site between Benešova and Koliště streets (49 11'41.972"N, 16 36'55.477"E) // Tues - Sun 10am - 6pm The Rafani artistic collective creates a public space in a location which is visibly private, on a building site in the immediate vicinity of the historic city centre, intended for the construction of an office and shopping centre. At its centre Rafani has had built a small French garden, the ornamental morphology of which - referring to the number of members of the collective - opens up for visitors space for wandering contemplation. Jiří Skála Born 1976 in Klatovy, lives and works in Prague. Winner of the Jindřich Chalupecký Prize for Exhibitions: Art in General, New York; Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels; Frankfurter Kunstverein. Foreign Bodies, th June, 5pm Marshall Malinovský Memorial (49 11'46.049"N, 16 36'52.250"E), 11 th June, 6pm Raduit de Souches memorial (49 11'42.138"N, 16 35'55.839"E), 22 nd June, 5pm Eduard Beneš memorial (49 12'29.585"N, 16 35'32.210"E), 22 nd June, 6pm Red Army Soldier memorial (49 11'58.711"N, 16 36'31.411"E) Jiří Skála's performance will be given by the major Czech rap artist Vladimír 518 on four occasions during the exhibition, each time at a different existing monument. The performance consists of readings from the author's short story on the construction of personal and public historical memory.

6 Matěj Smetana Born 1980 in Prague, lives and works in Prague. Exhibitions: Moravian Gallery in Brno; BROTkunsthalle, Vienna; Villa Reykjavik. Star, 2011 light installation on Lužánecká street (49 12'16.907"N, 16 36'27.059"E) // daily at midnight The extremely limited visibility of Matěj Smetana's installation should lead to the creation of a new urban myth, in which residents will tell stories of an experience which in practice none of them has actually had. The work consists of a model of a star which every day at midnight, in the gleam of reflectors, rises for a few moments from a pit in an outlying part of Lužánky park. Adéla Svobodová Born 1978 in Prague, lives and works in Prague. Exhibitions: Karlin Studios, Prague; Meetfactory, Prague; Praguebiennale 4. Untitled, 2011 corner of Uhelná a Úzká streets (49 11'20.188"N, 16 36'39.599"E), Veselá street (49 11'45.990"N, 16 36'19.287"E) Adéla Svobodová's billboards are on the border between free art and graphic design. In contrast to other works of art which use this medium for promotion (as in standard advertising) and thus are not able to deny their commercial function, from the positions of graphic design Svobodová achieves a critical reflex for the medium as well as a strong aesthetic resonance. She in fact reduces the image on the billboard to areas of three primary colours (azure, purple, yellow) and black, from which she composes all the printed images. Jan Šerých Born 1972, lives and works in Prague. Exhibitions: Kunstverein Bonn; Municipal Art Gallery, Prague; the Moravian Gallery in Brno. A Thousand Reasons to Return, 2011 Moravské námestí (49 11'56.463"N, 16 36'31.215"E) A panoramic photograph attached to a cylinder represents a mirror immage of the busy square in the city centre, frozen in time. The moment-in-time shot, taken automatically during street mapping for the internet, should serve to create an illusion of movement in three-

7 dimensional space, but Šerých in contrast turns it into a monument to the moment in question. Cricket, 2011 Passage Alfa, Poštovská (49 11'41.355"N, 16 36'35.864"E) A sound installation making use of directed loudspeaker technology brings into the busy site of a well-used passage a sound which instead evokes within us a stay in the country, leading us to a fruitless search for the source of this intense sound, just as when we look for a real cricket. Michal Škoda Born 1962 in Tábor, lives and works in Soběslav. Centre d'art Neuchâtel; Praguebiennale 4; Center for Contemporary Non-Objective Art, Brussels. White, 2011 passageway at the corner of Dornych and Křenová, Municipal Police building (49 11'29.937"N, 16 36'53.430"E) Michal Škoda has brought his systematic interest in the significance connotations of reductive and geometrising tendencies to a new level in his painting up of an outlying passageway near a busy crossroads. This invisible place, which we would otherwise pass through without noticing, has paradoxically been rendered visible by his painstaking reconstruction. This space, painted out in brilliant white, thus becomes a focus of attention. The work came about as a result of the kind support of the users of the Municipal Police building, which offered this space while fully aware that the transformation of this location might induce negative reactions in some Brno residents in relation to its "white" reconstruction. Jiří Thýn Born 1977 in Prague, lives and works in Prague. Exhibitions: Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Municipal Art Gallery, Prague. Light Composition No. 15, 2011 façade overlooking Římské náměstí, Františkánská 17 (49 11'34.347"N, 16 36'41.418"E) This light sculpture by Jiří Thýn is based on the morphology of preserved architectural

8 elements on the blind façade of an ordinary block flats, facing in on an enclosed yard in the city centre. Thýn has reacted to these elements by creating an abstract installation of fluorescent lights which evoke the commercial aesthetic of a period advertisement, as well as the formally reductive tendency of the minimalist art arising at that time in the entirely different social and cultural situation abroad. Karel Císar, curator Born 1972, works at the Philosophy Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. His printed work includes inter alia What is Photography? Herrmann a Synové 2004, Markéta Othová, Walther König 2010 and Things I Don't Discuss With Others, Agite 2010, and he has contributed to these monographs: Ján Mancuška: Against Interpretation, Hatje Cantz 2011, MAM Project: Katerina Šedá, Mori Art Museum Among others, he has been the curator of the 5 th and 6 th Young Art Biennale, Zvon, Municipal Art Gallery, Prague 2005 and 2008, Memories of the Future, Václav Špála Gallery 2009, Any-instant-whatever, Bunkier Sztuki, Krakov, 2009 and 50% Grey, Contemporary Czech Photography Reconsidered, (s K. Irvine) MoCP, Chicago, Sculpture In The Streets Brno Art Open 2011 / Information about the exhibition Karel Císař, , kcisarcz@yahoo.com Press materials, photographs Barbora Antonová, , antonova@dum-umeni.cz Production Jitka Vitásková, Zdenek Hamža Installations Paul Lerch, Ladislav Mirvald, Pavel Dvorák, Jiří Šmíd, Suchceren Technical Support Pavel Velecký, New Work Supporting Programme Barbora Šedivá, Evi Scheller (current programme on Graphic Design 2011 Designers (Petr Bosák, Robert Jansa) Photography Michaela Dvoráková, Martin Polák Organised by The City of Brno in conjunction with the Brno House of Arts The project takes place with the kind support of the following partners City of Brno, Region of South Moravia, Czech Ministry of Culture, the Czech Republic Visegrad Fund ARS PUBLICA, CD centrum, Českomoravský beton, CNFB - Česko německý fond budoucnosti, Dopravní stavby, DPMB, Fakulta architektury VUT, Goethe-Institut v Praze, Hausner, Hotel Avion, Hotel International, Německé velvyslanectví v Praze, Podzemní stavby, Robert Bosch Stiftung, TSB, UAD, Wombat, 4AM With especial thanks to Brněnské komunikace, a.s., Verejná zelen mesta Brna, a.s., Mestská policie Brno