Window before the curtain
19. 4. - 27. 5. 2018
Vysočina Regional Gallery in Jihlava
Komensky Street No. 10
Jihlava
curator: Petr Veselý
opening: 19 April 2018 at 5 pm
Window before the curtain,
Topic - As is evident from the title of the exhibition, the leitmotiv is the different connotations and properties of the window theme. In the conception of the exhibition, however, I resigned to the main, "big" theme and formed it as a summary of partial themes, partial stories, often interconnecting both motivationally and in the way of accessing them
Path, Stop
It turned out, however, that what that the motifs most closely unites is the motif of a path. The paths through space and time, the paths specific, its expressions showing even more meaningless, the way to and in itself. From the theme of the journey directly follows the relationship of the path and stops, places and divisions. Stop can be perceived in several planes as "unreasonable" stop in a place, in a situation such as adhesion of a trace, or as a placement of a place; setting up present or present past. Stopping is actually "stopping the work" and the image itself, its non-obvious existence, which at the same time assures us of the existence of "things" and of ourselves.
An important context of the journey is also the theme of transformation in a changing context, ie, in the case of "repeating" selected artifacts in the new neighborhood. Therefore, the installation will not be a sequence of individual expositions of individual exhibitors, but will try to form a mutual correspondence both content and "formal". The exhibition is perhaps a specific story, the way. And the story is just the space of the image, its "reading".
Window, Suspension
We can also regard the window as a dividing line. In a way, the window interconnects and "re-divides" and, for example, covers the curtain or suspension. In a number of exposed artifacts, it is indeed possible to trace that they reveal something, show whether they hide that they can be an expression of something invisible or even absent, temporarily or forever unavailable. The window is in the means of medium, the mediator of communication (for example in the paintings of the Annunciation P.M. is the mediator between "heavenly and earthly").
By its nature and its geometric shape (order, definition), the window also refers to the image. Not to his illusion, but to his particular physical existence; the window is the subject.
Subject, Case
Another motif - and in our case the theme - is the thing, the object, the container and its (missing?) content. The relationship inside and outside, once again the relation between the hidden and the obvious, the outside and the "emptiness" inside, has its equivalent in the motif of the vessel, "... no more wonder than the mere being of things in space." (Vincenc Kramář)
Story
The certain partialy subject are also stories written by authors, at this point I would like to remind Svatopluk Otiska and Jan Steklík who have been in the selection since the beginning and who died last year.
Several themes, as well as the authors, relate to the place, namely Jihlava and its surroundings (Mahler, Toufar, Jirous, Hejda, Jirous, Doležal).
Picture as a thing
The partial theme of the exhibition is the relation of the autonomy of the image and the image as a representation between the representation of the thing and the image as a thing, namely, by pointing to a certain object of the traditional image, or to its own autonomous qualities, which support its subjectality or the illusion of the subject, eg by relation to the format or specific articulation of space.
Poetry
An integral part of the concept of the exhibition is poetry, concrete poems that relate to the theme of the exhibition in different ways, and will be given contentualy and visualy to the same level as other artifacts exhibited.
Exhibitings
There are among the exhibitings are renowned authors even authors , whose names appear sporadically, but whose work deserves attention and importance for the concept of the exhibition: Miloš Doležal (poetry), Zbyněk Hejda (poetry), Jennifer Helia De Felice (photographs), Tomáš Hlavina (object), Jan Jemelka (paintings), Ivan Martin Jirous (poetry), Věra Jirousová (poetry), Michal Kalhous (photographs), Jiří Kapov (paintings), Jiří Kovanda objects), Svatopluk Otisk (paintings), Dana Podracka (poetry), Jan Steklík (hanging objects), Jaromír Šimkůj (hanging objects), Martin Vybíral (photography), Petr Veselý (curator, paintings, object).
In Brno, February 11, 2018
Petr Veselý (curator of the exhibition)
