Everything Just Washes Over Me

19. 5. – 11. 7. 2021

artists: Václav Sika, Kristina Láníková,
Jan Fabián, František Fekete
curators: Sráč Sam and Denisa Bytelová

Enjoy proximity and experience a sense of security.

This exhibition took the form of a gradual and mutual familiarisation with the same and the different. It arose through an arduous recitation of the same that did not lead to understanding, but became simply the next experience and starting point for our forthcoming movement in discussions and reflections. Each of the many meetings led to anticipated events as well as unexpected confrontations. Backup plans were crowded out by original intentions, to which we consistently returned in almost unchanged form. Our resolve strengthened by the trajectory of the subjects discussed, we find ourselves at the start. Public presentation is not dangerous: it is a celebration of the work.

SrS

Everything just washes over me, said Václav Sika with conscious resignation in his cellar studio after Sráč Sam had asked artists an initial question regarding their readiness to work with another’s output. The invitation to withdraw from their own ego caused much in the way of irritation.

Our interest in observing the close connection between life and art became the invisible profile of the exhibition. The processes involved in its origin were essential and decisive for the outcome. We approached the form of the exhibition without any visual preconceptions. Our only orientation was our previous experience with the approach taken by the selected artists. The common denominator when contacting Sika, Láníková, Fabián and Fekete was their employment in the cultural sphere, even though this does not correspond to their own professional specialisation. It was this fact that led us to consider the possibilities of adaptation and the ability to sideline oneself, and to the question as to whether this type of sidestepping might be reflected in greater empathy and a better understanding of the other. At the same time, our questions were aimed at repeatedly re-evaluating predetermined roles and reassessing the role of the curator and artist. As a result, the composition of the exhibition is, in addition to its own visual references, the mediator of relationships and reciprocities.

The artistic witness borne of a simple suggestion gave rise to diverse formats of corporeality and levels of intimacy. Václav Sika was nominated for the position of muse for his imaginative potential. In the case of the others, inspiration and reflection were manifest on many levels without this compromising the autonomy of their normal artistic expression. In a small series of photographic self-portraits, František Fekete presented a number of suggestive poses leading to the liberation of the male body. He combined these with visual noise and embellished them with Sika’s associative objects. The resulting combination creates a tension between existential burden and the lightness of play. Kristina Láníková tends to work with corporeality in a remote fashion in her texts and images. For the exhibition she carried out a thorough edit of Sika’s autobiographical recollections. From a distance she focused on the limitations and complications that impacted his life. She then had Sika record this selection and presented them in audio form at the exhibition. She arrived at an identification with his output through seriality and work with waste material, and included a cycle of her own drawings of scraps of leather. Like plasters or lucopren forms, she opts for a shade of nude, which, however, remains hidden in the subtle outlines of the scraps. A pair of photographs of a woman in costume and a woman in a mask represents the interface between artists (Sika, Láníková, Sráč Sam). The inspiration behind this work was Sika’s Chodky. A comparison of these images of rigid visuality and strange attributes offers much in the way of speculation regarding the social role of women. As always, Jan Fabián attempted to come to terms with spatial and institutional predetermination, and incorporated the careful observations and comments of the co-exhibitors into his work. He included experience with the handling, storage and transportation of artworks. He created a radically romanticising vision, forsook the exhibition space, loaded the exhibition onto a cart and planned a route.

Endless circulation was transformed into presentiment and a rhythmic trancelike pulsation chartered by someone other than is usual in our daily lives.

Denisa Bytelová
(transl. Phil Jones)

The programme of the Center for Contemporary Arts Prague receives support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Council, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, City District 
Prague 7
partners: Kostka stav
media support: ArtMap, jlbjlt.net and UMA: You Make Art