The shop with off-price drugstore products used to be in Bayerova street in Brno between 1986–1989 and it also served as an independent exhibition place.
Its conception was created by Petr Oslzlý and Rostislav Pospíšil who represented the fine art and theatre area and its technical support was provided by the drugstore manager Drahomír Svatoň. The exhibitions were interconnected with other unofficial or partly official activities of the Brno circle. The British Foundation of Jan Hus donated necessary technical equipment for so called „underground university“ and it also influenced the form of exhibition openings in the Gallery Off-price Products – after each opening it was possible to project in a nearby restaurant Prague a profile of the exhibiting artist filmed in his studio. The videos were usually made by Aleš Záboj, some of them also by Milan Maryška, Michal Hýbek, Pavel Jandourek or Petr Macků. The openings in the gallery itself were also unusual – the exhibiting artist, dressed in a dust coat, helped for an hour in the drugstore with the sale before the shop’s closing hour. The film shows the gallery interior and the organisers interpreting their own activities as an original performance.
Terezie Nekvindová
Special thanks to Aleš Záboj for providing the video do the VVP AVU archive.
In the Window to the Archive programme the AVU Research Center in Prague (VVP AVU) in conjunction with Artyčok.tv regularly release works from the VVP AVU video archive (go to http://vvp.avu.cz/idatum/search/artvideoarchiv?string=). The selection for Artyčok.tv focuses on older works (materials from the end of the 20th century), works bordering on video art, film and documentation, or on purely documentary materials related to the recent development of Czech and Slovak visual art.
