NOVEMBER 2022

Continuum Transfunctioner

_ Radka Bodzewicz___ Alexandr Martsynyuk___ Julius Reichel___ Olia Svetlanova

Curators: Alexandra Karpuchina, Lucie Pankrácová

Exhibition opening:
𝟔.𝟏𝟏. 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟐, 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝟏𝟖:𝟎𝟎

Můstek metro mezzanine under Wenceslas Square, Prague (CZ)

The new gallery, with its specific curatorial approach, aims to create a unique concept of gradually moving the viewer into the virtual world by illustrating the possibility of transitions between classical and digital art, digital art into the virtual environment and, last but not least, into the decentralized world of NFT.

The first exhibition will be dedicated to transition, or transmission. Using the example of several works by contemporary artists, it will demonstrate the possibilities of stepping into or out of virtual space.

OCTOBER 2022

All That Is Solid Melds in the Air by National Gallery Prague - Trade Fair Palace

JULY 2022

JUNE 2022

The Children's Gallery Lapidarium in Broumov Cloister

Tapas - an exhibition that I prepared for the children's gallery in the Broumov cloister. This word Tapas comes from Sanskrit, which is literally a perfectly composed language, and its meaning is related to inner burning. To me it means absolute immersion, surrender, burning on all levels of being. All of these meanings contain fire, which is transformative. My children still show me how important it is to burn, to be immersed in everyday experiences.

The theme of the exhibition is the human destiny and, above all, the invisible world that we carry within us as spiritual beings. I am inspired by mythology, analyzes of spiritual traditions and the archaic world of shamanism, in which I discover incredible parallels for myself. I try to enter the field of the collective unconscious with the image and thus get closer to the viewer through symbol, color, shape, meaning. I believe in the painting is as a message that communicates beyond time and space.

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MAY 2022

The Young and Restful in Meet Factory (Prague, CZ)

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The Young and Restful is an exhibition of artists of the very generation that encountered the dominance of conceptual minimalism at schools and galleries during their studies almost ten years ago. As the hand-crafting techniques became the center of international contemporary art, the featured artists took to them in recent years as well. The repetitive rhythm of crafts and haptic material perception bring about the beneficial state of full concentration or flow that is praised by all mindfulness coaches generated by our performance-based society. This is, however, only a theory. Long hours of manual labor may also cause stress, exhaustion, and physical pain. The exhibiting artists often turned to handwork because they were frustrated with either creative arts (the oversaturation of both digital and conceptual art approaches), the societal marginalization, or new living conditions (social isolation connected with early maternity, worsened health state, or the current pandemic). I call them Young and Restful with a touch of humor as they do not shout loudly at today’s challenges but they sew them in, carve them in, dig them in and engrave them in their artworks. But as it turns out, the name fits less and less.

The exhibition is a part of the long-time exhibition cycle of the MeetFactory Gallery called Other Knowledge curated by Tereza Jindrová. It follows forms of knowledge transfer that go against the rational principle that dominates the Western and Central European society. When we craft by our hands, we pass on the experience not only orally through stories but also using motoric memory. Our knit and purl is the same as that of our ancestors, who taught us the craft.

In the spirit of insanity, which is one of the subliminal themes of the exhibition, I interviewed the artists to prepare for the show and understand their personal motivation to use time consuming manual labor. Some of them said it was initiated by a passion for collective creation as an interhuman contact of sharing. On the other side of the spectrum are the artists who exclude such moments of sharing and purposefully isolate themselves. However, it is apparent in both cases that they capture their stories using stitches, cuts, and strokes. If they injure their hands sometimes, they imprint DNA on their art literally.

The materials turn out to be great confessors, both discrete and resistant to pungent confessions. I must also mention the Greco-Roman mythological story analogy of Philomela which I read about while researching the current trend of crocheting in contemporary art by the Bosnian artist Šejla Kamerić. The story, as captured by Ovid in Metamorphoses, is about Philomela who is dragged into mountains, raped, and tortured by her brother-in-law Tereus. He, then, cuts off her tongue to silence her. In the end, Philomela weaves her story into a white yarn and gives it to a servant to bring it to her sister who sets her free. “She was unable to talk as she was mute but her pain inspired her imagination and her misfortune sharpened her mind. She stretched her smart white yarn on someone’s loom and weaved in her fate in purple letters.”

Apart from already stated frustration or need for loosening of the art form, which is being mentioned by artists themselves when talking about learning the craft, another often stressed motif is longing for “return”. Of what? The craft which they mostly learned to do during their teens and later left behind being burned out and fascinated by then new technologies. It is also the return of archetypal work and basic skills which bring back feelings of self-affirmation and “re-anchoring” that are much needed in the times of fluently passing from paralysis of the pandemic to the reality of until recently unimaginable and not-so-distant war in Ukraine.

Eva B. Riebová, curator