Exhibition
Vis Naturae
David Madar, Pavel Matoušek, Štefan Pecko, Markéta Souhradová, Jana Stejskalová
curator: Lenka Sýkorová
The opening will take place at Altán Klamovka Gallery September 20, 2016, from 6 pm. The exhibition will run until October 15, 2016, opening hours: Wednesday and Saturday from 2 to 5 pm.
You will find our Gallery in park Klamovka, near the tram station (No. 4, 9 & 16).
The exhibition Vis Naturae works with institutional critique. It interconnects three alternative non-profit gallery spaces - listed Altán Klamovka in Prague’s Klamovka park, Ústí nad Labem outdoor gallery in Vitro located near the campus of the University of Jan Evangelista Purkyně in three concrete showcases right on the street, and Gallery Bunker in the town of Most located in the basement of a residential building. How to combine two specific galleries from North Bohemia and point out that they are guided by artist curator?
Of course, it is best done through an exhibition, which will work with the principles that the artists address as curators at their galleries. The first is the exploration of borders of spatial schemes of a conventional gallery space. At gallery In Vitro it is working with the street and the open format of the showcases. At gallery Bunker it means dealing with the specificity of a former air-raid shelter. The second point of contact is the fact that all the galleries are interested in an audience that is recruited from a closed community of people interested in visual arts outside the centre of Prague. Collaboration between artists, which is always very common in the region is the right mycelium from which the local scene grows, the moment which is most important at the current exhibition Vis Naturae.
The outcome of mutual participation of two curatorial and artistic teams from these galleries is an installation responding to the mechanisms of gallery operation, taking into account the specificity of each of the three participating galleries. At Altán Klamovka it is a restriction based on the fact that it is a listed building which must be protected and not damaged during the installation. Working with the public is directed at the spectator’s activity. The actual installation encourages viewers to become more active and think about how to perceive a work of art without a well-established schemes for interpretations of contemporary art. Visitors to the exhibition Vis Naturae are forced to look up above the ordinary spectator’s view and at the same time perceive anew the clean gallery space of Altán Klamovka, seeking for themselves new limits to the gallery space.
Lenka Sýkorová