Vojtěch Fröhlich & Sebastian Stumpf
Sebastian Stumpf (1980 Würzburg) and Vojtěch Fröhlich (1985 Prague) share several characteristics. The essential ones include a conceptual approach to their artworks, a liking for photography and video as well as an interest in the city environment and its specific places. The extraordinary ones include a physical disposition due to their sports activities ranging from climbing to free movement across the city or space regardless of walls and other obstacles. These characteristics make the two artists special individuals both on the Czech and German art scene. This was also the initial motive for their common Prague exhibition.
Rather than using their physical condition to demonstrate the body and its agility, the two artists freely move in space to open up themes related to the function and use of the given place as well as to our mentality. They employ movement in space and action as a method to reveal the absurdities that have become part of our normality.
However, the fact that they work in similar ways does not mean they produce identical results. The exhibition at Drdova Gallery only proves that. To Sebastian Stumpf, the method of spatial exploration is based on stubborn repetition resulting in a recording of the action with precisely composed scenes. To Vojtěch Fröhlich, movement in space is a generator of feelings and moods whose meaning consists in interconnecting places that otherwise cannot be connected. The result may be a video, a photograph as well as a spatial installation, with the latter mediating the poetic aspect of these activities.
Rostislav Koryčánek
- I first met Sebastian Stumpf when we looking for interesting artists to take part in a project in Brno.00:00:12.376
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- I found some of his projects really remarkable, in some of the projects he takes on a role of a kind of wizard,00:00:23.656
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- who offered the viewers unusual experiences by the way he worked with space and his body.00:00:30.613
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- Whereas Vojtěch is not a wizard, he´s rather a kind of guide, who takes the viewer together with him,00:00:38.705
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- he doesn´t pretend anything and unlike Sebastian he doesn´t create any illusions.00:00:49.251
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- On the contrary, he shows everything, the entire method he uses when working with space and his body.00:00:54.467
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- The viewer can follow with him everything that is happening between the two spaces.00:01:01.243
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- If there is something that helped to bring these two names together, then it was the ability of Vojtěch Frohlich00:01:10.259
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- to take advantage of the given space here and of the location of the gallery in a block of flats.00:01:21.954
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- He took very good use of all this and created what I´d call an exhibition wrapping.00:01:32.459
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- This is given by the changed angle of the wall outside that would normally be parallel,00:01:39.493
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- there is also an entrance that was normally functional but now is unusable,00:01:49.877
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- the door is no longer used, the viewer has to struggle through a narrow dark corridor,00:01:53.362
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- until he gets to a wash basin above which there is a mirror showing a recording of Vojtěch making his way through the house,00:02:04.853
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- from the bottom up to the roof and back through the air shaft down to the place where the joint route started.00:02:14.487
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- Then you return to the place you saw from the outside and proceed to the room00:02:25.251
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- where Sebastian displays a part of his wizardry, he is extremely precise in selecting his shots.00:02:35.420
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- He often makes use of repetition, which enables him to set his angle of view and achieve perfection.00:02:53.286
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