HUNKY DORY
Opening August 21st 6 pm
Exhibition until September 15th 2013
Exhibiting artist: Peter Barényi (SK), Martinka Bobriková & Oscar de Carmen (SK, ES, NO), Billy Gallery: Tymek Borowski (PL) & Paweł Sysiak (PL), Clakula: Ashley Clark (USA) & Matej Vakula (SK, USA), Ashley Clark (USA), Dávid Demjanovič (SK), Jaś Domicz (PL), Antonín Jirát (CZ), Martin Kochan (SK), Petr Krátký (CZ), Jaroslav Kyša (SK, UK), Calvin Laing (UK), Kata Mach (SK), Nicole Morris (UK), Karíma Al-Mukhtarová (CZ), Janek Rous (CZ), Martin Špirec (SK), Milan Vagač (SK), Miroslava Večeřová (CZ), Zuzana Žabková (SK)
Curators: Viktor Čech & Katarína Slaninová
The exhibition HUNKY DORY focuses on a specific feature present in art practices of the current young generation of artists – the way how they reflect in their work their life experiences stemming and, often unconsciously, combining the real and virtual world, the intellectual and ordinary world. Their creative approach is characterized by a highly sensitive, and of many peculiarities sensible, insight. They draw their inspiration from particularities of daily life, obsessions with tedious things and activities, which, using principles well informed in the history of art of previous decades – especially conceptual art - they, transform into unforgettable experiences and moments. Despite an apparent intellectual colouring and conceptual structure of work, their approach strongly accentuates a private dimension. Yet, it is not about exaggerated individualism. Their experience is civil, akin to any experience of any individual in the postindustrial technological civilization. Their world naturally combines the real private space and similarly natural virtual space - the world of the internet and new technologies - as well as low-cost approaches in terms of “innocent” DIY, or conscious “ugliness”, “sluggishness”, ridiculousness and banality.
Despite thematization of a multi-faceted and variable nature of everyday life, their work lacks any avant-gardepathos and they do not necessarily and inevitably elevate a common life to a subject worthy of serious interest of art. The both worlds stand in the same line; it is only an angle of interpretation that is shifted. Unusual, humorous or odd ordinary moments and situations become for them a theme as well as a structure. Their perception of our world of generated experience, where the media and private reality are intertwined with one another, is fresh and playful. In many respects their work can be included in a recent concept of Altermodern introduced by Nicolas Bourriaud, which in the Czech environment is often referred to by artists and theoreticians tended to a more “academic” position and an expression based on analysis of formal legacy of modernism. Or, as it is true mainly in the Slovak art, it is intentionally not reflected, or completely ignored in contemporary theoretical discourse. Nevertheless these artists still have to cope with the “creation” of experience and post-colonial or post-industrial legacy of modernism in a social meaning of the word. Their life is not pervaded by a forward or backward going vision, nor by a need of civic engagement. What is crucial is a transmission, transgression of an everyday experience and its communication and sharing with the viewer. Notwithstanding the similarities of their works, each of these artists remains an individual and, should we borrow a word popular in avant-garde art, but currently bearing more negative or sceptical connotations, original author.
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