The Prague Post
December 1st, 2008
Endowment Fund     Business Listings ONLINE      Reservations      Classifieds    Subscriptions
Hotel Prague Centre

Home » Archives » Night & Day

Risky business

Form trumps function at this risqué display
Gallery Review | Search restaurants | Archives

By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
June 27th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
The exhibits range from what seem to be leftover construction materials to a giant gob festooned with consumer paraphernalia.
enlarge
COURTESY PHOTO
enlarge
Form Follows ... Risk

Ends July 29. At Futura, Holečkova 49, Prague 5–Smíchov, open Wed.–Sun. noon–7 p.m.; and Karlín Studios, Křižíkova 34, Prague 8–Karlín, open Tues.–Sun. noon–6 p.m.

This international group exhibit is all about taking risks with three-dimensional constructions.
Curated by Jana and Jiří Ševčík, in cooperation with the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava, where it will be exhibited in an expanded version in August, “Form Follows … Risk” is an ambitious project bringing together more than 50 artists and architects from the Czech Republic and Slovakia, as well as from the United States and other European countries. The project attempts to bridge the gap between contemporary sculpture and architecture by inviting artists and architects to create new, complex and hybrid forms.
Surprisingly, some of the most carefully made forms created for this show resemble nothing so much as construction-site waste material, especially the huge gray plaster piece by Viennese artist Franz West at the entrance to Futura. Another colorful papier mache and metal piece by the same artist could well be taken for factory waste.
Looking beyond similar gritty assemblages, there are pieces that more successfully address the theme of the exhibit. Petr Zubek’s Ensemble IV (1998), for instance, is a curious media sculpture made up of three TVs and a wall projection. The lower TV shows a vintage magnetic tape player running a loop of surf music and 1960s Czech bigbít tunes. Another TV shows an image of a dancing white shirt with a heart that lights up intermittently, while a smaller TV shows a bundle of fluffy animal tails cuddled together. Projected on the wall behind the TVs are interlocking hands in motion. The installation works together as an integrated whole, connected by a cool soundtrack.
Another noteworthy media work is Michal Kuzemenský’s TV Set Roe (2007). It is a small TV sitting on a three-legged stand (actually a funky tree stump) showing a static gray image that blinks to the sound of an incessant and eventually aggravating multipitched drone, like so many avant-garde noise bands.
One of the simplest constructions is also one of the most aesthetically effective: Tomáš Džadoň’s Carpenters Joints (Two Communistic Cabinets Joined With a Flat Overlap Joint). Džadoň reuses sturdy, still-functional wooden furniture, elegant in its craftsmanship yet treated by contemporary society as castaway material because of its associations with the socialist era.
A feminine version of this approach is taken by Hana Vinklárková, who places glass constructions on tall steel pedestals. Her sculptural installation Die Parade is composed of three vintage glass vases turned upside-down with a spiral set on top, making it resemble an ice cream sundae dribbled with pearls, sparkles and gems. Vinklárková’s Holy Shit, an air-filled white turd floating in the air nearby, is an ineffective match for this confection.
Some of the contributors, such as Joe Scanlan, have simply re-contextualized banal furniture. Scanlan sets portable tables of cardboard with marble-laminated tops on their sides to make a sculpture titled Barricade. Christian Gebhardt’s Dependency and Reference are deconstructed tables and desks with tape alterations, placed on their sides or stuck to the wall. Finally, Jiří Skála’s Object 1, a low-set, marble-laminated coffee table with the center cut out, makes a similar design statement with nonfunctional, tacky furniture.
In the video room, a composite by the international art collective Minimaforms is showing on a small TV on the floor, near a wall projection by Coop Himmelb(I) from Austria. Minimaform’s three short videos (Blank Space, Think Weapon and Glass Dancer) are at best canny re-creations of the early 20th-century abstract photography of Jaroslav Rössler or Man Ray.
The gem of the show is by Chalupecký Award–winning artist Jiří Černický. His sculpture The Gob is a whopping booger hanging off the wall. It’s so big that it can hold a portable radio (playing disco from a local radio station), a little TV (also broadcasting a local station), a pink rubber glove, a fluorescent light tube, plastic thongs, little cars and countless other objects, all embedded in what is perhaps the world’s largest snot sculpture.
The majority of works in this two-part exhibition is at Futura. A small selection of rougher, larger, bulkier or more precarious pieces is at Karlín Studios, an accommodating industrial space.
“Form Follows … Risk” is a good alternative to the summer season’s crowd-pleasing fare. With architects (mostly young) riffing off sculptures (mostly architectural), the result is — if not risky — ambitious and unique.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (27/06/2007):

Browse the Current Issue

If you enjoyed this article, why don't you subscribe to the print version!
We accept secure online transactions provided by PayPal and Moneybookers

Be the first to add a comment!


Full Name: *
City: *
E-mail: **
This comment can be published in the print version of The Prague Post
Enter the text on the right:
 visual captcha
Comment: *
* Required field. In order to be approved for display, comments must have a first and last name and a city.
** E-mails are required and will only be used for internal purposes.

Most visited in Business Listings

Provokator
Hotel booking
The Prague Post Online contains a selection of articles that have been printed in
The Prague Post, a weekly newspaper published in the Czech Republic.
To subscribe to the print paper, click here.
Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.