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Familiar faces

Karel Císař reprises his 2006 biennial of young Czech artists
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
August 20th, 2008 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Ján Mančuška goes places more timid souls fear to tread in The Other.
Zvon 2008

at House at the Stone Bell Ends Sept. 21. Staroměstské nám. 13, Prague 1-Old Town. Open Tues.-Sun. 10 a.m.-6 p.m.

The poster and pamphlet for Zvon 2008 bear a plaster mask of a man’s face that looks unmistakably like the biennial’s curator, Karel Císař. And a line on the pamphlet reads, “Karel Císař presents,” like a concert promotions leaflet. So there’s no question about who masterminded the 6th Biennial of Young Czech Artists.
Císař, who also curated Zvon 2006, makes a daring break with tradition this time by inviting back only the artists who participated in Zvon 2006, rather than presenting younger, lesser-known artists. Císař explains his rationale this way: “Instead of another sketchy encounter with contemporary art, the exhibition will allow the audience to think more in depth about the development and direction of individual artistic positions.”
The exhibition begins with a surprise by Eva Koťátková (born in 1982), the most recent recipient of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award for young artists: A long, disorienting wooden tunnel cuts across the entire first room, leading to a brightly lit room full of mixed-media constructions, made mostly of thin wooden strips but also of deformed mittens and men’s underwear.
Petr Strouhal (born in 1977) is showing small color photographs, on which he scratches or draws, or applies small stickers, essentially making graffiti on the photos. Next, Filip Cenek (born in 1976) and Jiří Havlíček (born in 1977) are screening a video in two parts: “Don’t Know” and “Blackout.” Both feature a young girl riding on a skateboard ever so slowly down a sidewalk, first in daylight, then, for just a few seconds — blackout — at night.
Summer Forever by Ludmila Smejkalová (born in 1979) consists of a small folding-screen canvas along one wall, paired with three girls’ dresses displayed in the middle of the room. The canvases are covered with geometric patterns and images of a devilish-angel girl in naughty sexual acts; similar images are seen on the erotic-chic dresses.
Evžen Šimera’s Transformation of Light is a black box with lines carved into the sides and top. It is not a coincidence that his work is in a former Gothic chapel room. According to Šimera (born in 1980), the light shining out of his boxes is like the light of heaven coming through stained glass into Gothic cathedrals. His black box can also be taken as a reference to today’s Gothic rock crowd, with their penchant for black fashion and overall dark outlook on life.
In the next room, Jakub Hošek (born in 1979) is showing his painting Total Sexy Church and a mixed-media construction titled Picture Framing and Some Other Dark Shit, both painted in his characteristic grim dark drips, like spatters of blood. Helping the mood along is suspenseful music heard in the background from Joseph Bolf’s video Living Room.
Bolf’s melancholic video is a lush epic, like a David Lynch film with puppets. It features gorgeous, suicidal puppets in grim settings with the severed heads of goats and puppies as pets. With this video, Bolf (born in 1971) brings the sad scenes of his better-known paintings (not on view in this show) to life, giving the scenes a background and symbolic resurrection.
In the last room on the first floor, conceptual artist Kateřina Šedá (born in 1977) — another recent Chalupecký Award winner — presents Over and Over, an elaborate academic/scientific analysis of her Moravian village roots and community relations.
On the second floor, Ján Mančuška’s contribution is a standout. The Other is a performance documented on strips of black-and-white negatives hung in front of a long light box. For the performance, the artist (born in 1972) asked his wife to paint black all the parts of his body that he can’t see. Her efforts and his poses are captured on more than 100 frames that are all well worth closer observation.
Toward the end of the exhibit, Patricie Fexová (born in 1975) displays 308 Photos on a Board, color photographs of interiors that look like a dorm room or a student apartment. Sometimes the room is unoccupied, other times people are studying or sleeping, but overall there’s not much action. In the same room, Jiří Skála (born in 1976) contributes recordings (heard through headphones) of a psychological test being taken by candidates trying to become judges, which the artist made on two occasions. Both of the candidates’ private revelations are too impersonal to generate much interest.
In the last room, Fexová is showing Right Eye, Left Eye, two paintings on doughnut-shaped canvases. Painted in pastel gray-green-blue smears, they look like irises surrounding the blank white pupils of the walls, creating the impression of eyes void, or without a vision.
Near the closing of the biennial, Sept. 18, there will be a symposium about contemporary art in general and the goal of this biennial in particular. With its stated aim to “emphasize the irreplaceable position of contemporary art and its critical function in the life of the society,” Karel Císař’s Zvon 2008 hits the mark about 50 percent of the time.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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