školská 28

The installation of Iveta Bradáčová “Couples from our village” consists of a collection of watercolors, which are transformed in social action through releasing a series of postcards. These small-format genre paintings capture people in situations, interactions, or activities typical of life in a contemporary village. Bradáčová paints from photographs taken from the webpages of the village where she lives. The result is a kaleidoscope of individual, collective and sometimes even ritual themes with widely varying emotional qualities. In some of the paintings, we can see the artist herself, as a participant in the community being observed.
The notion of “genre” painting signifies a tendency that exists in art to make paintings that describe the everyday life of mostly anonymous people in a city or village. This is not meant as a display of specific people, towns and landscapes, but instead serves to depict scenes of work, business, etc., for an appreciative udience. “Couples of our village”, however, goes beyond mere genre painting, in its display of specific characters and real stories in miniature. Some details and situations come close to being ethnographic sketches, but go beyond that through a colourism that is spontaneously painterly. Bradáčová follows the pattern of genre pictures from the second half of the 19th century, when a rich tradition of postcards emerged with the massive spread of tourism. She has published a set of the images as postcards and will offer them for sale to the villagers. Thus, these “hacked” photos can notionally return to the people captured in them, and who can tuck them into a cupboard, or use them for their correspondence.
During the exhibition, the postcards will also be for sale at Gallery Školská 28.