Exhibition
GKJ v Altánu / 13+1
Altán Klamovka Gallery in Praze
Marie Vránová /curator of project GJK/
Ondřej Basjuk, Šárka Koudelová, Tomáš Lumpe a Pavel Matoušek, Jana Vojnárová, Petr Gruber, Adéla Marie Jirků, Alžběta Kočvarová, Martina Hudečková, Anne Claire Barriga, Ryan OʹRourke a Sonya Darrow
http://galeriekinjidelna.blogspot.cz
An opening of the exhibition August 23, 2016, from 6 p. m.
Video projection by Ryan OʹRourke from 8p.m. The exhibition will run until September 17, 2016
Curator of Gallery: Lenka Sýkorová
Marie Vránová /W835/April?, Installation, 2016
Marie Vránová, curator of the Galerie KIN jídelna (GKJ) project situated in the grounds of the Koh-i-noor factory, presents a cross section of artists who exhibited at GKJ in the years 2014 – 2016.
The author also shows her own work, consisting of a quest for the body of the horse Cassela, in whose memory there is a romanticist monument near Klamovka Altán. The monument, probably commissioned in 1838 by Count Eduard Clam-Gallas in honour of his favourite horse, depicts only its head, the body is missing. So we can only guess at its real appearance.
Ondřej Basjuk / Panznosu, video, installation, 2016
The artist has created a short video capturing the period look of the garden from an era when Klamovka park was owned by the Clam-Gallas family. The video is presented in a miniature-format projection as part of an installation together with a statuette of Panznosu, which will be set up in front of the pavilion during the vernissage, so becoming, for a time, part of the park.
Šárka Koudelová Basjuk / Light-Bringer, oil on wood 26×18 cm, 2016
In the painting “Light-Bringer”, the author joins a theme she has already worked with in GKJ with the historical-intellectual context of Klamovka park. The theme of her installation in GKJ was light, expressed in the form of a small white monochrome. The motivation for her picture for Altán is the figure of the historical owner of Klamovka, Czech aristocrat, revivalist and patron of the arts, Kristián Filip Clam-Gallas, who had a number of romantic pavilions built around the summer-residence, including the Altán itself. According to historical sources it was used to stage small theatre performances in which the Count himself acted. The artist works with period photographs of actors in costume from the beginning of the 19th century. The small monochromatic format is a personal synthesis of reverberations from her installation in GKJ, an homage to Count Clam-Gallas and, as a symbol of light and day, also forms an antithesis to the adjacent Temple of the Night. By dint of its hanging on a white wall, and in the context of a problematic group exhibition, where everyone fights for their own place and attention, the picture almost represents something that is not present.
Tomáš Lumpe & Pavel Matoušek / K. V. + R. P., photographs, 2016
The artists investigate street art tags created in the spring of this year on the side wall of the Altán Klamovka, and do so through the medium of photography. These are accompanied by the textual work of an art theorist, touching on current developments in street art in the Czech Republic.
Jana Vojnárová / Statue of a Chinese Man with a Monkey at the Viewing Terrace, installation, 2016
With an installation of collages, Jana Vojnárová reacts to the statue “Chinese Man with a Monkey”, formerly located at the Chinese Pavilion in nearby Cibulka park in Košíře, though it has not survived till the present. The artist used a similar strategy in GKJ in responding to a picture which had been stolen from the canteen. The Chinese Pavilion in Cibulka Park was built in 1822, but since 1989 it has been in a desolate state. There are only very few photos in existence which show the original appearance of the statue. Jana Vojnárová recreates memories of the oriental gazebo and romantic park in her collages, interweaving these reminiscences with present-day photos of her family, and in this way constructs a story using figures of young girls, drawings and photos of vanished things.
Petr Gruber / Klamovka, watercolour painting, 56×76 cm, 2016
Petr Gruber is a painter and a wayfarer. His dominant medium is paint. His approach to the project for Altán Klamovka is similar to the one he used in his exhibition in GKJ, for which he created a watercolour painting in the woods nearby. For this project he first observed the space around him, took walks in Klamovka park and absorbed the surroundings. His moody watercolours depict lazy summer evenings in the park after a rainy day; bluish reflections of the sky on leaves, the town washed in golden light somewhere in the distance between the trees.
Adéla Marie Jirků / Flag, installation, print on flag cloth, 2016
The artist uses the plans, projects and ideas of the other artists taking part in the GKJ project at the Altán / 13 + 1 as a starting point. She reacts to their separate themes via illustrations which which she will install at the entrance to Altán Klamovka in the form of a flag which the visitor must pass through in order to enter.
Alžběta Kočvarová / Tower, installation, 2016’
Altán Klamovka evokes a surreal atmosphere in the artist. Alžběta Kočvarová’s installation responds to this feeling, taking inspiration from a section of the book “Beyond the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There” by English author Lewis Carroll: “And what did Alice find there: The alternation of Red and White is perhaps not so strictly observed as it might be, and the ‘castling’ of the three Queens is merely a way of saying that they entered the palace; but the ‘check’ of the White King at move 6, the capture of the Red Knight at move 7, and the final ‘check-mate’ of the Red King, will be found, by any one who will take the trouble to set the pieces and play the moves as directed, to be strictly in accordance with the laws of the game..”
Martina Hudečková / Light, porcelain, 2016
Here the artist exhibits a blazing candelabra, fated to become a record of transformations and deformations in soft wax. At the point the candle looses its function there remains porcelain – permanent and unchanging. It does not succumb to time, but none the less has a connection to time. Klamovka park remembers many events, from those that exceeded its borders up to the small lives of the animals whose monuments were erected at Klamovka by the Clam-Gallas family. These are reminders of the irreversible changes we are subject to; in similar fashion the candles also undergo an inexorable transformation through the fire’s heat.
Anne Claire Barriga / Beliefs Altánu, installation, 2016
The artist created a drawing-object for the romanticist neo-gothic Altán Klamovka on the wall of the building on the basis of ornamental curved lines, the planes of the drawing rooted in the fundamental motives of celtic ornament, blending into the gothic style. In a meditative way, her work transforms into a personal experience for her, even though she has no particular personal closeness to celtic culture and ornamentation.
Ryan OʹRourke / VpCgflux, video-projection, 2016
Ryan O’Rourke uses a portrait of Victor Ponrepo and of an unnamed Princess Clam-Gallas as a starting point. Over these figures he layers and generates pictures of nature, evoking the park, vineyards and the cinema in the form of Ponrepo’s “kinematograf” which was operated here in the past. The author applied a similar principle of work before at GKJ; this time he shifts the work into the realm of video-projection, interweaving layers and so creating a series of abstract pictures, processed by algorithms on a computer. The video-projection will take place during the vernissage and will not be repeated. Only a photographic record of it will remain in the exhibition.
Sonya Darrow / Ode to the Dining Room / Ode to a Tablecloth, 2016
The artist presents an object made of tablecloth fabric as an ode to mealtimes. Sonya Darrow finds her inspiration in lunchtime rituals in the canteen of the Koh-i-noor factory. She reacts to the iconography and the visual memory inherent in the patterns of tablecloths. She also records the soundscape of dining rituals, through which she transmits the memory of the dining room encoded in sound: listening to people at their meal and moving about in the environment of the canteen. She transfers this object to the space of Altán Klamovka with the intention of reminding us of a collective space for all exhibiting artists; in this way a tablecloth becomes a shared space in which to realise the ritual of the meal./translate by Ryan OʹRourke/
/translate by Ryan OʹRourke/
photos: Pavel Matoušek