I am looking at a photograph. It might be mine, but it can just as well be yours. I hold it in my hand, or I have come across it on the internet. The more attention and time I devote to it, the more it mesmerizes me and inscribes itself in my memory. It slowly starts becoming all; as if I could leave my own self and enter the photograph. As if I could encounter it.
#encounter
Reality is not just in the here and now, but stretches between the past and the future, between our perspec¬tives which penetrate it and change it. In order to truly comprehend this, in order to be able to visualize it, we need to overcome our singular perspective. We need a sense of orientation and a wider view of the world around us. In a certain sense, we need a photograph.
#ontology
In the exhibiton, there are projects that deal explicitly with encounters – as mediated by paid dating services (Zheng Minghui), between roommates (Veronika Durbáková), in terms of body language (Alexandra Mertová), or an encounter with animals (Dominik Gajarský). But the encounter with the inhuman world plays principal role in our exhibition. You can engage works that are dealing with ontology in terms of visual punctures (Martin Netočný), measures and geometry (Artur Magrot), astronomy (Inka Karčáková) or by reflecting the waves surrounding us (Oskar Helcel).
#there
Moreover we aim at an encounter here. We are interested in the specific space and surrounding of our exhibition – pointing to the dubious nature of shopping malls. Therefore, we engage with the consumerist commodification of photography and its meaning (Pamela Kuťáková), with the tangible and affective elements of shopping (Romana Drdová) and even explicitly with shopping mall as a space for meeting (Zheng Minghui). Finally, we address also the question of medium of an encounter – be it the photography itself (ferrotypes), or more pervasively the digital technologies (Šimon Levitner and David Střeleček) or the internet (Dalibor Knapp) and its social media (Johana Novotná).
#here
Here, in our exhibition, the photograph and other media adopt the guise of various en¬counters, meetings with people and with things. Much like abbreviations, symbols, or hashtags, they create a rhythm, condensing meaning while constantly dra¬wing us in, closer towards the encounter. The photo¬graph oscillates between the fictitious and the real, the expressive and the intimate; the deep and the superfici-al, the serious and the ephemeral.
#eluding
Curator: Václav Janoščík
Artist: Romana Drdová, Veronika Durbáková, Dominik Gajarský, Oskar Helcel, Inka Karčáková, Dalibor Knapp, Pamela Kuťáková, Šimon Levitner + David Střeleček, Richard Janeček, Artur Magrot, Alexandra Mertová, Zheng Minghui, Martin Netočný, Johana Novotná
Authors of ferrotypes: Camille Bonneau, Rony Eranezhath, Hanlu Gong, Anna Jarosz a Elena Semeriková, Petronella Karlsson Aslund, Adam Mička, Eleonora Riabkov, Alexander Rossa, Marie Sieberová, Jakub Svoboda, Natálie Ševčíková, Erika Štěpánková, River Young