ART HAS NO HISTORY !
Curators: Viktor Čech, Lenka Sýkorová
Opening: June 1st 2011 from 6pm
The exhibition will be open until June 26th 2011
Participating artists: Jan Brož, Karíma Al-Mukhtarová, Luděk Rathouský, Marek Meduna,Matyáš Chochola, Milan Salák, Patricie Fexová, Petr Krátký, Vasil Artamonov – Alexey Klyuykov
„Art has no history!“ In terms of our contemporary artistic situation, for which its own history serves as a continuous source of inspiration – may this reality be driven by our consciousness or unconsciousness; this exclamation may seem slightly contradictory. Nevertheless, isn’t it exactly this twist full of abandonment and revisits of the past that forms the basis of what we tend to call “the contemporary”? And moreover, what substitutes the feeling of our continuous apprehension of history as well as our a-historical position reduced to a “here and now”? An interesting moment in our contemporary situation, which unveils this shift in perception of the already “recognized”, is the complex situation, in which the broad index that structures our today’s dictionary of popular art forms can be found. Aware of the above, the exhibition focuses on the current display of this phenomenon, namely than among artists who have undertaken the “conceptual lesson”, which thus became an inseparable part of their production process, and who now tend to engage with materials and forms rooted in the past.
On a simplified level it could be said that what defines and unites the works in the exhibition, is the tension between the classical conceptual approach and applied creativity of the classical esthetic product. The approach is closely connected to the “intellectual” take on the structure of ideas, of which the work is part of. Nevertheless, this grasp is frequently connected to the scholarly art of Renaissance Mannerism, rather than to the ideas of conceptual formalism understood as late conceptualism.
A different view point on this matter can be however also offered by someone who acquired his knowledge on art as an enclosed and complex system of gradual development in form. The art historian; (s)he is part of the topical and for him/her anachronistic “present”. (S)he is positioned in front of a number of artistic strategies and forms, frequently reminding him/her of an “enclosed’ history, yet levitating in between a non-synoptical contextual space.
Our art historian will however aim to at least frame this non – history with which he as an art historian must deal with, and thus facilitate a comprehensive corpus directed towards this stream of theoretical thought. This first visitor of the exhibition surpassed all visitors of the opening and, but at least left trails of his intervention composed from fragments of the above corpus, left behind on the walls of the gallery space.
The year-round exhibition plan of Karlin Studios is supported by:Magistrát hl.m. Prahy, Ministerstvo kultury
Media partners: Radio 1, Umělec, Artyčok.tv, Radio Wave, Artmap, Pragueout.cz, Pražské Galerie
Project partner: M2 Real Estate, a.s.
Exhibition will be held as a part of the PQ+ accompanying program within the Prague Quadrennial of Scenography and Performance Design 2011.
ART HAS NO HISTORY 