Exhibiting artists: Zbyněk Baladrán, Aleš Čermák, Václav Magid, Ladislav Nebeský, Jiří Ptáček, Pavel Rudolf, Jiří Skála, Jan Šerých, Miloslav Topinka, Jiří Valoch, Lenka Vítková. Curated by Markéta Kubačáková and Viktor Čech.
The exhibition U dUbU tU bUdU, curated by Markéta Kubačáková and Viktor Čech, reflects the current relationship between poetry and the visual arts. The curators draw a connection between two attitudes evident in the artistic scrutiny of written language as a medium: visual poetry and conceptual art. Poetry has come close to the conceptual tendencies of visual art during the process of redefining Modernism. While conceptual artists embraced the text, they also strove to reduce artistic expression and the physical object to a bare text description and message. For them, the substance yet remains beyond encoded language.
The artist may use graphical layout as a way of making the reading of a text more difficult in such a way as to break reading conventions through non-linear forms of representation. This can be in a form of a puzzle, a transcription of words into sounds, using an algorithm, or via translation into different semantic systems. The result is the escape of the text from the surface, but with which the artist maintains a connection.
This exhibition spans generations: there are not many young poets in local scene using visuals as their tool, but in the fine art community there is growing number of artists who like to work with text in their installations. What connects both groups is the tendency to use narration -- themes of duration, listening, sequence, deconstruction of the narrative, or a description of abstract events. Narration is achieved on one hand by encoding the text, and on the other through a transformation of the concepts.
Viktor Čech (1980), graduated from the Philosophical Faculty of Charles University in Prague in the Theory and history of Fine Art, with PhD studies at The School of Applied Arts in Prague.
Markéta Kubačáková (1984), graduated from The School of Applied Arts in Prague, in Theory and History of art and Cultural Studies. She studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Technical University Brno, in the Atelier Video (J. Alvaer, M. Zet, J. Ptáček).
