The Jelení Gallery is a non-commercial gallery and a part of the Centre for Contemporary Art Prague (www.fcca.cz). It was established in 1999 in the street called Jelení near Prague Castle (hence the gallery´s name) but in 2005 it was relocated to its present address in Drtinova street in Smíchov.
The program of the gallery focuses on promoting the work of contemporary young artists, often still students at different art schools, and for most of them this is an opportunity to exhibit their work for the first time. A smaller number of exhibitions is devoted to mature artists. The gallery does not focus on one type of media, on the contrary, it aims at presenting work of the most talented artists whatever media they use at the given time. The gallery promotes innovative work in sculpture, painting, drawing, photography, new media, performance art and lately also in the field of text
The choice of artists is based on a continual, up-to-date survey of the art scene in Prague and other towns and regions, the gallery closely co-operates with teachers at art schools in Brno, Ostrava, Ústí nad Labem and Pilsen.
Great attention is paid to art students already in course of their studies at university where they have to regularly present their work, they participate in discussions with other students and artists, and often take part in exchange stays or they receive grants and scholarships to study abroad. However, after graduating, the situation changes radically. They are beginning artists whose work is mostly not known yet, most of them cannot sell their work easily and are forced to spend most of their time doing different jobs to make a living for themselves and their families. Reality may become unusually hard for them and that is why it is so important to get support from galleries during this period of life.
The gallery was established thanks to the initiative of Gabriela Kotiková (Bukovinská) who initially worked with curators David Kulhánek and Michal Pěchouček and has recently been preparing the program together with Dominik Lang. Many other curators, e.g. Vít Havránek, Pavlína Morganová, Mariana Serranová, Martin Mazanec and Tereza Jindrová, have taken part in individual projects.
