Against Nature / curated by Edith Jeřábková and Chris Sharp
Artists: Alžběta Bačíková, David Fesl, Ondřej Filípek, Kateřina Holá, Martin Lukáč, Tatiana Nikulina, Ondřej Petrlík, Johana Pošová, Anna Ročňová, Lucie Rosenfeldová, Martina Smutná, Rudolf Skopec, Viktorie Valocká
05.10.2016 - 15.01.2017
National Gallery of Prague
Staroměstské nám. 12
110 15 Prague 1
Czech Republic
110 15 Prague 1
Czech Republic
Rudolf Skopec, Ondřej Filípek
Ondřej Filípek
Rudolf Skopec
Johana Pošová
Anna
Ročňová
Ondřej Petrlík
Anna Ročňová
Viktorie Valocká
David Fesl
Kateřina Holá
Kateřina Holá
Tatiana Nikulina
Martin Lukáč
Alžběta Bačíková, Lucie Rosenfeldová, Martina Smutná
Tatiana Nikulina
In the
celebratory year of its 220th anniversary, the National Gallery in Prague is
proudly launching a new exhibition project, devoted to the exploration of the
emerging Czech art scene. Conceived as a regular event, it expresses the
Gallery’s genuine commitment to following the most
interesting and innovative developments occurring within the local art
community. Anti-monumental at its core, focused and concise, the survey is thematically
outlined by the curatorial approach and a careful selection process, provided
by a double perspective of the local and international curators. Avoiding the
clichés usually associated with such
projects (how the present is being defined, how the future is being foreseen
and what is one’s relationship to the past), the exhibition
delivers a lens through which the current emerging artistic production can be
seen and critically embraced; at the same time, however, it is a promise of
what comes next, a prophecy as to what a new generation’s
concerns will be about and how will they contribute to the understanding and a
perception of the world that surrounds us and shapes our identity and
consciousness.
Against Nature
is also an attempt to find themes treated by the artists, who are presented
here in a tightly woven curatorial design. This approach does not include the
whole range, complexity, and variety of their works, but at the same time does
not violate their artistic expression with an a priori gaze. A shift towards
subjective approaches that open up new ways of learning and an examination of
the possibilities artists have to once again engage in empirical investigation
form an unclosed chapter in the course of contemporary art. The work of all of the
selected artists contains a sense for the ontological promiscuity at the heart
of nature, or, to put it in a better way, shows that so-called natural things
are actually quite strange. This revelation, however, is never stated clearly
and openly. It simply comes about - with the relative inexplicability of nature
itself. No less strange and striking is the use of combinations of materials
that give rise to shapeless and unidentifiable forms, which indirectly work
themselves into the difficult discussion of what is natural and what is
unnatural.
It seems that,
with this generation, we have stopped believing in art’s
service as a critical tool and have turned our attention to art as a means of
finding a path. The spheres of intuition, instinct, and imagination, prohibited
until relatively recently, now once again have their place in the sun. In
contrast to the role that objects played as vehicles for critical commentary in
the first decade of the 21st century, the second decade has seen a process of
de-objectification and the search for a new subjectivism not as weighed down by
anthropocentrism. Artists no longer want to implement pre-planned approaches as
in the conceptual methodology, but rather “think through creation”. They are attempting to find in art
a link between two activities of the living body – work and thinking – which the age
of reason had kept separated. It is thus necessary to reevaluate them once more
and, as the case may be, to break up some Enlightenment polarities – working/thinking,
subject/object, nature/culture, and others – and also to reformulate the
fundamental question of our relationship to the natural. There are certainly
many ways to deal with this issue, but those common to the artists in this
exhibition are the thoughtful combination and transformation of materials;
often individual and non-artistic technologies; the processual nature of, and a
certain “slowness” in, their method of production; and
a kind of expressivity, which is not expressivity in the traditional sense: it does
not relate so much to individuals and their personal psychology, but rather to
the materials and media themselves. Significant, however, is also the belief
that artistic truth cannot be dissociated from form, from the manner of
creation, and from the answering private questions publicly through form.
The phrase “against nature”
contains within itself
an acknowledgement of nature. But what sort of acknowledgment, when philosophy
cannot even reach a consensus on what nature is and what it means? Must nature
thus only be acknowledged today by demarcation or by reference to it as some
sort of abstract category? The title Against Nature comes from the English
translation of J. K. Huysmans’s symbolist classic À rebours, published in 1884. While the novel’s main character, Des Esseintes, prefers naturalism and materialism over
idealism and mysticism, the artists included in this exhibition mix all these “isms”
together and create an
all-encompassing formalism of diverse personal and distinctive shapes, in which
form and technique are perfectly harmonised with their content. It is this very
breakdown of the borders of Enlightenment polarities that ensures a dialogue
between this group of artists and contemporary European philosophy and
production of art. Despite their contemporary nature, though, these works are
not merely an indication of the present moment. The art in Against Nature is
grounded in the formal and historical foundations of particular disciplines,
and achieves a certain degree of timelessness. Edith Jeřábková
& Chris Sharp