Walking, Running, Dancing, Grasping, Fetching or Carrying... on Artyčok

The current exhibition project is focused on the role of the physical gesture and contact in contemporary art conditions. Physical manifestations of the human body, symbolic gestures, signalled action, and actual physical interaction between individuals, all ranked among fundamental elements employed by classic art. In contemporary artistic production, however, they have tended to be present primarily in the fields of video and performance, and in parallel with these, in the field of contemporary dance. These seemingly most immediate means of interpersonal communication nonetheless also inherently bear the entire weight of the history of the reception of the human body in visual culture.

At first sight it is a very banal theme,00:01:09.582
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an interpersonal physical interaction.00:01:13.047
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I tried to show how this moment00:01:16.052
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works in contemporary visual culture,00:01:19.925
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both the mass and the art one.00:01:23.845
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When we look at old art,00:01:30.636
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let's say renaissance, baroque or 19th century,00:01:34.345
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and simplify the today's aesthetic view on00:01:40.575
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the parameters of Ruben's work, for example,00:01:46.281
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the main motives of these classic paintings00:01:50.264
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are often very dramatic00:01:53.062
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scenes of sex and violence.00:01:56.563
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When we take the contemporary visual00:02:02.927
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culture such as films, action movies00:02:04.885
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or mainstream culture generally, PC games,00:02:06.726
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I'm not criticising it but I just want to point out00:02:09.192
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that there is a very similar moment.00:02:11.449
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And for the viewers,00:02:13.617
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although they never realize it,00:02:14.820
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the aesthetic code is essential.00:02:16.220
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They don't perceive the violence but00:02:18.701
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the aesthetic moment of the body struggle00:02:20.961
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and the story point similarly spectacularly.00:02:24.335
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I was interested in the perspective of contemporary art,00:02:33.036
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in this case performance,00:02:36.687
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video performance and contemporary dance.00:02:40.135
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And how this area,00:02:43.680
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which usually avoids the mass00:02:46.519
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spectacularity, deals with it.00:02:49.440
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And it is interesting to compare it with the old art.00:02:52.900
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The exhibition presents works of past ten years,00:02:55.641
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where these moments appear00:03:00.941
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in intimate, nonconformist,00:03:04.864
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diverted or very specific,00:03:09.937
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non-spectacular positions.00:03:15.280
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This theme, from the contemporary art perspective,00:03:25.192
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isn't dominant in this country.00:03:28.666
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It's rather an edge of00:03:31.242
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a boundary area working with body.00:03:33.213
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I regard it as a certain distance00:03:40.286
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of contemporary art from the mass00:03:43.665
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spectacularity and a human body itself.00:03:47.959
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It's a certain worry, not in case of00:03:53.204
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the artists presented here and few others.00:03:54.660
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Present-day interest in modern style,00:03:58.644
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certain issues of aestheticizing,00:04:01.211
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fetish and artefact ignores this corporeality00:04:03.701
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within the Czech, trendily constricted culture platform.00:04:08.944
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So this exhibition means a certain analysis to me,00:04:18.244
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even the exhibition text itself is an essay.00:04:23.362
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As for the historic reference to the corporeality,00:04:26.984
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the Gallery café was decorated00:04:32.355
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with variously valuable art scenes00:04:35.727
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from baroque to the 20th century,00:04:38.807
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dealing with this moment but which00:04:40.596
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can be found, at the same time,00:04:43.803
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in the contemporary visual culture.00:04:45.511
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So it's a kind of an open conception.00:04:47.033
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I was partly inspired by00:05:25.398
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Mnemosyne atlas by Aby Warburg,00:05:28.676
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who was a very popular,00:05:34.205
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a bit eccentric art historian from00:05:35.665
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the beginning of the 20th century.00:05:39.059
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He worked on, in his words,00:05:42.056
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pathosformel, which is his best-known term.00:05:47.299
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He dealt with certain forms of transmission00:05:52.113
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of psychologically visual codes, figurative positions00:05:54.926
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and gestures through art history00:05:58.620
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and at that time fairly modern period culture.00:06:01.463
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He played with picture combinations00:06:04.052
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from many different sources,00:06:07.071
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from baroque graphics to magazine pages,00:06:08.677
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the installation in the café00:06:10.820
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may refer to that a bit.00:06:14.585
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Of course it wasn't just00:06:19.603
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a physical contact for Warburg,00:06:22.875
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it was much broader field.00:06:24.767
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I used his model as a certain source of inspiration.00:06:26.453
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Because each moment displayed here in the gallery00:06:31.268
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could possibly follow up with00:06:35.429
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an older tradition of emotional message00:06:38.967
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with the help of a physical gesture.00:06:42.508
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Something can be also found in00:06:44.395
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the café among the older or classic art works.00:06:45.971
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I don't want to link it straight,00:06:49.365
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but I play with it a bit00:06:50.827
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and similarly like Warburg,00:06:52.172
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I also try out various combinations.00:06:53.306
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It works with the corporeality issue00:07:33.783
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which has theoretically been a part of a certain00:07:36.728
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debate for the past twenty years00:07:40.228
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within the art theoretical realm.00:07:42.440
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But I didn't go into any social or gender issues00:07:45.456
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but rather to the relation between00:07:51.956
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dance and contemporary art, movement choreography.00:07:57.191
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At the exhibition you can see this marginal area,00:08:01.364
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where the performers and artists are looking00:08:05.765
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for means of expression00:08:08.387
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or something concerning both areas.00:08:09.736
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As a curator I wanted to show00:08:15.004
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how I deal with all I have just defined00:08:17.787
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within different exhibitional projects00:08:21.203
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and from different perspectives.00:08:23.760

Walking, Running, Dancing, Grasping, Fetching or Carrying…

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