Exhibition: February 5 – March 4, 2016 at Skolska 28 Gallery, Fotograf Gallery and Ex Post
Opening on February 4, 2016 from 6 pm at Skolska 28 Gallery and Fotograf Gallery
Symposium: February 56, 2016 at the French Institute in Prague
Exhibiting artists: Finnur Arnar Arnarson (IS), Karlotta Blöndal (IS), Gunhild Enger (NO), Þórunn Eymundardóttir (IS), Monika Fryčov (CZ/IS), Tommy Hvik (NO), Elvar Már Kjartansson (IS), Alena Kotzmannov (CZ), Iselin Lindstad Hauge (NO), Julia Martin (DE/IS), Vladimr Merta (CZ), Pavel Mrkus (CZ), Greg Pope (NO), Kristín Rúnarsdóttir (IS), Ivar Smedstad (NO), Vladimir Turner (CZ), Robert Vlask (CZ), Diana Winklerov (CZ), Martin Zet (CZ).
The exhibition will present works by Czech, Icelandic and Norwegian artists, directly or indirectly inspired by what the group experienced during a series of three interdisciplinary expeditions to the subarctic regions of Norway, the brown coal basin in northern Bohemia, and the highlands and seashores of Iceland. The challenges of fostering collaboration among artists working together for the first time served also as an artistic and social experiment into the customs of countries that are geographically, artistically and culturally rather remote from each other. As a consequence, the exhibition reveals a broad spectrum of individual attitudes, interpretations, strategies and responses related to the specifics of three types of landscape. In a deeper sense, the works produced reveal shared concerns, and also express the need to reconcile these findings with existing perceptions. The exhibition is part of the international Frontiers of Solitude project, which focuses on current transformations of the landscape and the close connections between our post-industrial civilization and nature, and fosters collaboration and an exchange of experiences between individual artists, researchers and initiatives across Europe. The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive Czech-English catalogue.
The theme of the exhibition will be further elaborated by the interdisciplinary Frontiers of Solitude symposium, co-organised and hosted by the French Institute in Prague. It will offer a comparison of opinions, experiences, and points of view of artists, curators, and other invited guests on the themes of the Anthropocene, landscape and art. It will search for relationships between the cultural, political, and economic aspects of our understanding, and present denotations of words such as Earth, countryside, landscape, and land, including the topography of transitional zones, with an eye on both establishing and crossing over boundaries and limitations. The participating artists, art critics, architects, environmentalists, sociologist, philisophers and scientists have different cultural and professional backgrounds, but they all share a sincere, long-term interest in the impact of human activity on the landscape and Earths ecosystems.
How can we express and capture in humanrather than statisticalterms, both the visible and invisible transformations that the landscape undergoes, both locally and globally, with regard to the entire biosphere and climate? Does contemporary art make it possible to orient ourselves within this unstable and ever-changing territory? Do frequent art projects, festivals, and interdisciplinary conferences on the theme of Anthropocene offer viable approaches, possibilities or solutions?
Lecturers: Guy van Belle (BE/ CZ), Dustin Breitling (US), Vit Bohdal (CZ), Peter Cusack (GB), Petr Gibas (CZ), Andras Heszky (HU), Stanislav Komarek (CZ), Alena Kotzmannov (CZ), Julia Martin (DE/ IS), Pavel Mrkus (CZ), Ivo Prikryl (CZ), Ivar Smedstad (NO), Matej Spurny (CZ), Tereza Stockelova (CZ), Martin Skabraha (CZ), Martin Riha (CZ), The Laboratory of Insurrectionary Imagination (Isabelle Frmeaux /FR/ and John Jordan /GB/)
Both the exhibition and the symposium are part of the Frontiers of Solitude project, which is supported by a grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through the EEA Grants (Program CZ06 Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Arts). The project is a joint initiative of the Skolska 28 Gallery (Deai/setkn),Atelier Nord and Skaftfell Center for Visual Arts.
More information: http://frontiers-of-solitude.org/ eða http://skolska28.cz/