ART, MELANCHOLY AND LAUGH FACES IN THE FACE OF ABSURDITY
AJG - Ales South Bohemian Gallery
22.05.2021 - 03.10.2021
curated by Tomáš Vlček
Ales South Bohemian Gallery has prepared and presents an exhibition devoted to the neglected theme of late modern and contemporary Czech art, the theme of the artistic creation of a generation that entered the art at the time of normalization. It is an art often overlooked, largely misunderstood, whose image has been inadvertently and deliberately distorted and distorted as a result of profound civilizational and cultural contradictions.
It is about the art of conflict of natural creative thought and feeling with the absurd social reality of a country dominated by a totalitarian political regime. Even the most vicious attempts of the Communist re-regime to control all cultural life could not, at a time of non-development, break the own development tendencies of Czech art and prevent the resolution of its new subjects. The generation born in 1939-1953 responded to the challenges of the necessary restitution of art threatened by totalitarian regimes by capitalizing on its own traditions and experiences, along with adapting new creative discoveries and approaches to culture, nature, and life. Especially by creative use of the inspirations that came from a world steeped in the aura of freedom.
The exhibition presents works of two basic tendencies and contrasting genres of fine art from the mid-1960s to the present day. On the one hand, there are works from traditional forms of creation - paintings and sculptures, mainly from the directions and movements of new realism, minimal art, action and wildlife paintings and sculptures. On the other hand, conceptual approaches to art are presented, represented by photographs, objects and installations showing actions from the areas of happenings, performances or points of art performances. Displayed works representing contrasting modes of creation, which together responded to the crisis of the times and which often intersected. Both in the work of an entire generation and, in some cases, in the creation of individual artists.
Over 100 events and works of art by more than 30 personalities of Czech origin illustrate the efforts of the introduced generation to restore by new means the value of the natural world, which has become a world of absurdity due to the consequences of the civilization crisis. The Czech art of the generation born in the era of the tyranny of Hitler and Stalin in 1939-1953 was involved in the transformation and restitution of art in the various countries of the free and non-free world. The exhibition makes it possible to see Czech art as an environment that has brought and brings to the development of post-modern art specific qualities associated with melancholy and laughter, with irony as well as self-irony, with the expression of the crisis of culture as well as with the belief in the new - especially in forms of art other than the cultural sediments of totalitarian power, among which the generation of master creators themselves grew up.
Artists: Jiří Beránek, Marie Blabolilová, Eduard Jaroslav Dvořák, Kurt Gebauer, František Hodonský, Magdalena Jetelová, Ivan Kafka, Marian Karel, Milan Knížák, Jiří Kornatovský, Jiří Kovanda, Milan Kunc, Karel Miler, Jan Mlčoch, Jiří Načeradský, Vladimír Novák, Ivan Ouhel, Petr Pavlík, Tomáš Rajlich, Michael Rittstein, Jan Ságl, Zorka Ságlová, Jiří Sopko, Jiří Sozanský, Václav Stratil, Jitka Svobodová, Miloš Šejn, Vladimír Škoda, Petr Štembera, Tomáš Vlček, Stanislav Zippe
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Milos Šejn: BLOUDĚNÍ BAŽINAMI DYJE / WANDERING THROUGH THE DYJE RIVER SWAMPS, event, 1969
Milos Šejn: Padající Slunce / Falling Sun, performance, 1983
Milos Šejn: JAVOŘÍ LOUKOU / BECOMING THE MAPLE MEADOW, relic event, 350x350 cm, 2019