Bringing the outside in

The seventh Zvon (Bell) Biennial of Young Art at Prague City Gallery's House at the Stone Bell, which more often than not takes place at three-year intervals, has once again switched gears. The curator of the 2010 Bell Biennial is Tomáš Pospiszyl, whose selection of works by 20 artists treats contemporary culture as an interdisciplinary and intermedia phenomenon. What remains unchanged is that it is distinctively a curator's show.

Pospiszyl teaches at FAMU's Center for Audiovisual Studies, which offers an interdisciplinary blend of experimental cinematography, new media and conceptual art. So it's not surprising that he brings this approach to curating. What stands out as key issues are an emphasis on artists' interactions with society, with one another (collaborating as groups or duos), and with technology.

While the show brings into the gallery works that were created for public space, at the same time it directs viewers out of the gallery, into cyberspace, for a fuller understanding of some of the pieces. It also plays with the space of the building itself.

Visitors are greeted by a new, temporary admissions desk and cloakroom constructed just for this show, juxtaposed with various pieces of old furniture and constructions such as a white laminated pasteboard cube that has been smashed apart and pieced back together.

After ascending the spiral stairs, where a video animation by Vilém Novák cleverly works with the structure of the stairwell, visitors find that the first room of the exhibition proper is even more of a surprise than the lobby. Along with the work of Dominik Lang, the carpenter's workshop for preparing exhibitions has been relocated here.

The show quickly moves from a physical shakeup of viewers' expectations to more ephemeral turf. In the next room, Vladimír Turner presents a game called UFF, which he carried out in public space in May 2009. Using the GPS tracking ability of mobile phones, he mapped his movements around the city as he did 18 actions in public spaces. Viewers can watch the individual actions by pressing buttons on a large city map, or checking the project's Web site. At the end of the daylong performance, the artist called the police to report himself, then sent his SIM card up into the sky on a helium balloon - knowing he could be identified by CCTV cameras using the tracking data. The project takes the traditional concept of art interventions in public space to another level by calling our attention to the digital traces we leave behind, and how we voluntarily give up our privacy for the sake of convenience offered by mobile phones and the Internet.

The artist known as Epos 257 offers another twist on intervention in public space, this time posing questions about authors' rights with a video documentation of a paintball assault on an empty white billboard. The artist was informed about his participation in the show after the video was acquired from YouTube, turning the traditional interaction between curator and artist on its head.

Another conceptual piece, by Martin Kohout, is a simply displayed script for a language teacher, suggesting the instructor write down the first word or phrase that comes to mind each morning, then work the words into upcoming lesson plans. The novelty is that the second part, the result, is not provided to viewers. Although an interesting curatorial concept on some level, this piece falls flat.

The idea of bringing street art into the gallery without losing its essential character is problematic, just like the "institutionalization" of subversive interventions in public space.

One of the most effective pieces in the show is by the Toy_box collective, which combines street art with a comix aesthetic. Their room-size installation blends tactics of comics, the graphic novel and street art to communicate what it is like to be a schoolchild growing up in Neratovice, a dioxin hot spot. Schoolchildren living in this toxic place have the sense that the Spolana chemical plant, and their town along with it, could explode at any time. It is a compelling combination of the political and personal.

The art group Rafani, already well-known on the Czech art scene, presents a simple piece that works with the gallery's architectural space and again brings the outside in. In the last room on the gallery's first floor, a black double stage curtain pulls back to reveal a warped view of Old Town Square through the old panes of the room's beautiful Gothic windows. It's a familiar sight for regular visitors to the gallery, but Rafani presents it as a fresh view, drawing back the barrier between the viewers, the gallery space and the urban space outside.

The duo of Pavel Sterec and Vasil Artamonov has a conceptual piece that involves the wider public and also plays with the idea of history. They took road trips to several places around the country with the aim of getting themselves and the biennial written into the town chronicles. These two young artists scored a victory for conceptual art by convincing town chroniclers to enter the show into the annals before it even took place.

Where Zvon 2010 is most successful is in presenting a cross-section of issues in the consciousness of the youngest generation of artists. At several points in the show, it becomes clear that one of the main conceptual artists in the show is the curator himself - the ringmaster of the Bell.

Mimi Fronczak Rogers can be reached at
Features@praguepost.com