Exhibitions

[sally]

o no have you been kidnapped too? why is everyone talking in code today?

but ♥ thank you

[niminy-piminy]

isn't "res." something like cia or kgb or stasi? something highly conspirative?
btw. i wonder where i watched all those 11 Tacitas that i logged in the last few yrs.
i thought all from kilogram but i didn't get from kilogram any in the past.
so those films must have been online (or something)???

[flip]

i would love to sea that! is it online anywhere?

i don't know! i saw it quite a few years ago at a london gallery, as part of a dean solo show, which is why i'm not 100% sure of the title, you can see a brief fragment of it in the very short clip below, this version looks like a two-screen installation, and what i saw wasn't presented the same way, but i remember the film on the right, which goes on for quite a long time (the image quality is atrocious in the clip though and gorgeous in real life)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KfHqt2VlE4

[sally]

and after i made two people trash ratios it was all the time on mubi - she made it available to watch due to covid, which was lovely of her!

my ultimate dream movie is diana/actaeon, orpheus/eurydice & medusa all battling their gazes out on a distant shore somewhere under a giant lighthouse...

[rischka]

https://collections.louvre.fr/en/

the louvre has put all their collections online

(however their website is somewhat dysfunctional)

[niminy-piminy]

ALOÏSE (Liliane de Kermadec, 1975)
https://letterboxd.com/film/aloise/

Aloïse Corbaz (1886-1964) ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alo%C3%AFse_Corbaz


initially, she wanted to be a singer.


from her hometown (Lausanne) she traveled to Potsdam and was not kidnapped on the way.


with the outbreak of war (WW1) she suffered mental breakdown.


she returned to Lausanne


in asylum, she became an artist.


such an interesting subject, but such a dreadful film.

[niminy-piminy]

2015 poll viewing No32:
TROUBLEMAKERS: THE STORY OF LAND ART (James Crump)
https://letterboxd.com/film/troublemake ... -land-art/

Review by sethandthecity ↓
Dudes with cool jackets and sunglasses digging rocks. Also Nancy Holt exists.

[niminy-piminy]

finaly started to watch JOURNEY TO ROME (Tomasz Mielnik, 2015).
the opening of the film is from Rudolfinum.
(only the entrance hall with stairs, the subsequent gallery space is from somewhere else.)


Rudolfinum is primarily a concert hall.
but it houses an art gallery too and i am a frequent visitor there.
really love the place!
it is one of the best-curated art galleries in town and one of the foremost targets for local art lovers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolfinum
The building also contains the Galerie Rudolfinum, an art gallery that focuses mainly on contemporary art. It opened on 1 January 1994 and is... located at the back of the Rudolfinum. Galerie Rudolfinum has no collection of its own, and runs on the Kunsthalle principle, hosting a series of temporary exhibitions. It has around 1,500 square metres of exhibition space. The gallery director is Petr Nedoma.

[niminy-piminy]

finally figured out what's the other place ("the gallery space") in the film.


it is a pavilion in Stromovka park.
it is used by the local Academy of Arts for figurative drawing classes.


in the early 1990s, i was going to take drawing lessons there too.
at that time it was not that brightly colored (as far as i remember) and thus i didn't recognize it immediately.
at Tech Uni we had our own classes of figurative drawing but models were usually just some fellow students posing in swimsuits.
however, the Academy of Arts hired more interesting (picturesque) characters and they were posing nude.
so (together with few friends) we were occasionally omitting evening drawing classes on Tech Uni and sneaking in this pavilion (pretending to be AoA students — teachers from AoA supervising those classes usually didn't give a shit who exactly is there and they were willing to give advice to anyone present).
nowadays, one can participate in drawing lessons for the public there (those are paid — an extra source of income for AoA).

[niminy-piminy]

i guess, watching this film and posting stills will be a neverending story.
but i have to say i had (in the past) a fleeting personal acquaintance with one of the actors.
(who is not really an actor but a local sculptor and conceptual artist — thus it fits to this thread).
i noticed his name in the initial credits, so i was curious what characters he plays.
it is him.



he is occasionally playing (usually) minor roles in films and his name is Jan Turner.
Letterboxd lists only one acting credit, GORILA (Pavel Göbl, 2011).
https://letterboxd.com/actor/jan-turner/
IMDb lists his 5 acting credits (GORILA, i.e. his major acting appearance, is missing).
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2136303/

in the early 1990s, there was only one vegetarian student's canteen in Prague.
each university had its own student's canteen but they were not very veggie-friendly.
so there was one canteen (part of the Tech Uni campus) that was exclusively vegetarian.
thus all the university students from the whole Prague that were vegetarians were gathering there.
Jan studied on the Academy of Arts (sculpture) and was a close friend of my classmate (with whom i was on close friendly terms).
we all were (more or less) vegetarians, so occasionally we had common meals.

at that time Jan and some other dudes had a band called "Zlá žena hudba" ("Evil Woman the Music") and once (still in the early 1990s) i attended this obscure band's gig.
another member of the band also appears in the film (the guy sitting opposite Jan, right-front)


he is David Doubek, currently performing as an odd boomer musician called "Ventolin" ("Evil Woman the Music" band is long over and nearly forgotten — it never gained popularity — as opposed to Ventolin who is quite popular locally).
once (in 2013) i attended Ventolin's gig and did a lot of photos (will post them someday in the "Concerts" thread).
as an appetizer, i can share his song called "Disco Science" in which he is singing, "please, don't disturb. i'm inventing disco science. I'm looking for a hidden code of disco reality. i'm operating an accelerator of particles from disco dimension." etc., etc.
https://youtu.be/jjTOYerHRVo

or here he is rhyming, "i lost my totem, i am johnny rotten", etc., etc.
https://youtu.be/ZdZZ0cgawJg

but back to Jan Turner.
i see, he had an exhibition in 2015 in the UK.

https://london.czechcentres.cz/en/progr ... erii-divus
In his latest London exhibition, Czech sculptor and conceptual artists Jan Turner explores the early interpersonal experience, during which we form a whole series of habits that influence our future life, including the places, relationships and situations we find ourselves in. Inevitably connected to our parents voices whether real or imagined, these experiences are part of our mind and bodies. Drawing from his practice as both artist and physical therapist, Turner confronts us with photographs of deformed backs presented as disturbing mementos of our inter-subjectivity.

https://www.enclaveprojects.com/latest- ... an-turner/

[sally]

i didn't imagine the film would manage to evoke so many personal connections! but then i guess any film made in prague would?

[niminy-piminy]

i guess this particular film and its spirit is particularly evocative

and btw. this is the actress Ivana Uhlířová about whom i elaborated in Jan Švankmajer's poll thread (she plays one of the insects in INSECT).

[niminy-piminy]

yesterday, i was again (after more than a year) on the exhibition (of Jan Jedlička).

https://www.ghmp.cz/en/exhibitions/jan-jedlicka/

Jan Jedlička was born in 1944 in Prague. In 1969 he emigrated to Switzerland. Since then he has lived in Zurich, and since the 1990s in Prague too. In the late 1970s he began regularly staying and working in the Maremma in southern Tuscany. In 1993 and 1997 he was awarded grants to travel and work in Britain.

---------------------------

Jedlička uses a wide range of artistic media to produce longterm projects in which he seeks to explore several selected localities, in particular the Maremma region of Italy and the Prague Basin. Instead of depicting the Mediterranean or Central Bohemian landscape, however, his paintings and drawings consist of abstract signs and structures. They are not typical visual representations, but a kind of mental image of the landscape. Defining elements of Jedlička’s artistic creations include a reverential relationship to the landscape and the presence of time and light when moving through the countryside. Nevertheless, each image as a whole is characterized by a multilayered approach that is reflected in his systematic work with a wide range of media. The exhibition will be clearly structured according to the types of processes that Jedlička works with, and will present his extensive photographic cycles, paintings made using locally gathered pigments, drawings and cartographic records, prints and collotypes, and short films and videos.

This, the first comprehensive exhibition of the work of Jan Jedlička, a quintessentially European artist, maps all the facets of the extensive oeuvre that he has created since the 1970s in his Swiss, Italian and Prague homes. Jan Jedlička records landscapes, their visual aspects, but also what he experiences when moving through a landscape, and how the landscape changes. His observations reflect the seemingly indiscernible changes that shape a landscape from the perspective of different times of day, the changing seasons, the decades of the artist’s physical presence, the centuries of human civilisation and the millennia over which land masses have formed.

Jan Jedlička’s oeuvre seems at first sight very diverse, but closer examination reveals it to be surprisingly coherent. His combining of different techniques and media creates multi-layered images of places in a landscape, which he usually observes over a longer period of time. Here a photograph is supplemented with a film, or printed as a photogravure or screen print, or transposed into a mezzotint or drawing, or into a painting executed in Jedlička’s handmade pigments. Thanks to this diversity, viewers can uncover the individual layers, scenes and emotions as if they were falling into a dream about reality that lets them see beneath the surface of an image and transport themselves into the landscape itself.

The current exhibition at Prague City Gallery in the Municipal Library is the first to present the full breadth of Jan Jedlička’s art. It is not structured chronologically but instead maps how he moves through a landscape along the paths of his various creative strategies. Each work is always connected to a particular place and time, and for this reason the selection is arranged according to the three most significant geographical regions he has worked in.

1/ i mentioned (on this forum) Jan Jedlička already before because i watched a documentary about him and 3 of his short films as a part of JIDFF.

TRACES OF A LANDSCAPE (Petr Záruba, 2020)
viewtopic.php?p=23497#p23497

AIR (Jan Jedlička, 2001)
16 SKETCHES OF DIALOGUE (Jan Jedlička, 2002)
THE COOKS (Jan Jedlička, 1999)
viewtopic.php?p=23515#p23515

2/ i took too many pics (of various paintings and photographs) to post them all.
here are only 3 samples from 3 main regions (landscapes) he explored.

2.1/ his house and pigments of Maremma (Tuscany).


2.2/ trees, hills, pigments of the Isles (mainly Wales and Ireland).


2.3/ pigments of Prague.


3/ besides 3 of his short films i already watched during JIDFF (viz above) there were 3 more.

3.1/ ECHO VOCIS IMAGO (Jan Jedlička, 1994) — poetic documentary of his Maremma house.
https://vimeo.com/158305815

3.2/ INTERNO (Jan Jedlička, 2001)
https://vimeo.com/344495330

3.3/ BASILICA (Jan Jedlička, 1997, 19 min)
this b&w short film is a portrait (shot during the 1997 summer solstice) of St. George basilica (mostly romanesque — founded in 920, with some later additions, f.e. baroque facade) that is part of the Prague Castle complex.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Georg ... ca,_Prague

3.4/ there was also 8 min short doc called WINDOWS BY JAN JEDLIČKA IN THE CHURCH SS. COSMAS AND DAMIAN (ACIREALE, SICILY) by Marek Opatrný from 2014 (about making stained glass windows designed by JJ).

4/ there were many landscape photographs (mostly from Maremma).
but there was also a series called "A Winter Journey to the Sea" that was a sort of polemics with theoretician of photography Vilém Flusser (another Bohemian in exile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vil%C3%A9m_Flusser ) — to cinephiles known from a short film by Harun Farocki called KEYWORDS - IMPACT IMAGES. AN INTERVIEW WITH VILÉM FLUSSER (1986).


5/ last but not least, when i left the exhibition and walked back home i had an encounter with one of the (many) local magpies.
i didn't mention yet the prominent presence of magpies in Prague because after my many (other) fantastic claims (i made on this forum in the past) i was almost sure my local magpies' stories would not be taken seriously.
but anyway, here is one of them and it is upon the readers/viewers to believe it or not.

so, when i walked home i noticed a (one live) magpie.


at first, it seemed this magpie wanted me to take her selfies with various decorations (faces) on the facade of one of the local historical buildings.




his/her course of movement (across the facade) was obviously descending.


soon, it became clear i interrupted his/her garbage feasting (he/she clearly intended to get rid of me and go back to feasting — not taking selfies with various architectural elements of the facade).




if you wonder what he/she was finding especially delicious, then it was local Döner Box (with a fast-food goodie residue).

[sally]

♥♥♥

do you have the magpie rhyme/lore in prague? (and spit on the ground when you see one on its own to ward off the bad luck?)

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be told

am totally stealing (of course) the bullhead pic for future avatar

[niminy-piminy]

looking forward to the future (avatar)!

we call magpie "straka" and we have only a "straka" tongue twister saying...
Krákorala stará straka na raka, že jí vybral včera zrána stráčata.
(An old magpie was shouting at crayfish for stealing/devouring her baby magpies yesterday morning.)

[niminy-piminy]

last weekend i saw two exhibitions.

1/ there is a local theater troupe called "Handa Gote Research and Development".
http://handagote.com/en/handa-gote/
to celebrate their 15 yrs on stage (2005-2020) they exhibited (in a "cabinet of curiosities" fashion) all kinds of paraphernalia they used in their theater plays in the last 15 years.
https://www.techlib.cz/en/2746-gallery-ntk
there were many intriguing objects and i did 112 photos.
(btw. as far as i remember i attended their theater play only once in the past and seeing all those items i felt i missed a lot not going to see them on stage more often.)

f.e. my natural affinity to defeatism/escapism was saturated by the exhibited "white flag" (the symbol of capitulation) together with arrows and a bag for arrow poison.


there were also fancy wooden shoes, etc., etc., etc.


from cinephile pov, noteworthy was f.e. a shovel & a pile of video cassettes (Titanic included).


but there were not only various specific objects but the whole (particular) "settings", f.e. sewing corner.


completely on the left, you can notice several colorful slippers that i pictured (separately) in detail.


more on the left was ultimately this poncho.


this type of outfit always reminds me of Clint Eastwood.
maybe some of you can recall i posted this (below) pic in the "Knitting Club" in the past version of this forum.

Clint Eastwood irresistible in his granny square sweater vest

anyway, there were too many objects to share them all.

2/ on Sunday (a week ago), i was on the exhibition of semester works by students of the local Academy of Applied Arts.
they usually exhibit their work in the school building (btw. coincidentally the building in the post above — with a magpie sitting on the facade) but this time (due to covid restrictions) they were showing their works in another building (coincidentally in my neighborhood).

i did 55 photos and probably the most intriguing object was a porcelain statue of a girl cutting her own hair (allegory of the epidemic times).
the first pic shows initial sketches and clay models.
second pic, final porcelain statue.



there were also some school animation films shown.
they were displayed in this "screening hall" (view from the side of the screen towards the auditorium).
i was watching those films all alone in this room (i had the whole "cinema" for my own disposal).


3/ yesterday i have seen the exhibition of the local nearly forgotten modernist photographer Antonín Tonder (1888-1953).
i almost went to the wrong place because it was supposed to be in the Gallery of Josef Sudek and i mistakenly thought it is a label of Josef Sudek photo studio that currently serves also as a gallery space. there, i was several times in the past. but this particular exhibition was actually in the space where Josef Sudek lived and i was there never before. it is a small two rooms cozy flat in the proximity of Prague Castle.
unfortunately, only a few Antonín Tonder photographs were exhibited in this tiny space.
Antonín was making Moholy-Nagy-like photographs full of shadow plays.
probably avantgarde in its time, the usual modernist stuff from nowadays perspective.



more intriguing than few modernist photos exhibited were actually two other guys present in the gallery.
there was an exhibition guard who was selling tickets (a man about 60 yrs old) and his friend (a man about 80 yrs old) who came for a chat.
while i was looking at photos they were conversing and soon i was more driven to eavesdropping their chat than gazing on the walls.
the exhibition guard was very pessimistic about anything and everything (i felt a strong affinity to his universal negativism).
he was saying everything is shitty.
even his job in this gallery where hardly anybody comes and thus he has almost anything to do is too tiresome.
he is sick of everything.
his brother drives him crazy.
his brother is allegedly asthmatic but in reality, he is mentally deranged.
because his brother is mentally deranged, he feels lonesome.
and despite he feels lonesome he is rejecting to kill his time by at least such a stupid activity as watching TV because he is against all the technologies and advancement.
he is only fond of the past but he actually doesn't know a shit about the past.
he is ignorant.
and mentally deranged (not asthmatic as he claims).
etc., etc., etc.
the other dude (80 yrs old) probably lived in the neighborhood, was mostly killing time by writing something and whenever felt too lonely and longing for a little chat he (seems like) used to come to the gallery to speak with "everything is shitty" guy.
i didn't figure out what he was writing but he said he usually prints about 4 copies of his scribbles.
one copy goes to some archive and the other copies he distributes to random ppl who seem to be willing to eventually read the stuff.
i was almost tempted to ask this unknown guy to include me into his "subscribers" (despite i had no clue what his scribbles are about).
the old guy said to the younger guy, "i would give you one copy too but i doubt you would ever read it".
and the younger guy agreed, "yes, i am too tired to read anything. i have several books to finish reading but i am unable to do so. maybe when i will be in pension, i will have enough time and enough energy left. while guarding this empty gallery i could read something but even coming here is too tiresome and even this undemanding job makes me nuts. etc., etc. etc."
i almost didn't want to leave the place but if i would stay longer it would be obvious i am not looking at photographs but listening to them, so i left.
and since i was almost at the gates of the local Castle i decided to go home via the Castle compound.
in retrospect, i should not doing so because it was a sinister experience.
i was not allowed to pass free via the main gate (as usual), i had to go via another gate and undergo a security check.
everywhere cops or armed guys guarding who knows what.
i felt like i am in Myanmar and the local president to be the head of the junta who took hold of the power.
creepy creepy, looking forward to when the current Putin's slut (who appropriated the local Castle to display his imbecility) will be gone.

4/ today i skipped going anywhere and decided to write (instead) where i was going in the past.

[niminy-piminy]

visited two exhibitions today.

first CACHE...

https://www.galerierudolfinum.cz/en/exhibitions/cache/

https://youtu.be/PawCdVuiXd8

https://remonews.com/czechrepubliceng/w ... kicks-off/

What the divine planets are whispering to.
The Cache exhibition at the Rudolfinum Gallery kicks off

...

Science vs. antiquity

The largest work is a large-screen three-channel video projection by Pavel Mrkus called Observatory 01. When the viewer enters the darkened room, he feels as if he is in a planetarium. The perfectly focused planets Mars, Mercury and Venus can be seen on three synchronized screens.

Based on freely available images from NASA, Mrkus modeled an impressive animation of the planets, their changes depending on the impact of sunlight, and a detailed view of their surface. The animation underlined by the sound is accompanied by texts from which the viewer learns scientific and mythological information. The author has chosen three planets that represent the gods in the ancient tradition.

The longer a person looks at the projection, the clearer it is that, in addition to scientific data, bizarre communication takes place between planets. “I’m returning to the opposition of perihelion,” says Mars, and Venus responds, “I’m cooling off in the breeze of a solar storm.”

The large projection is complemented by a blurry video on the opposite wall, which reproduces scenes from the history of art depicting ancient gods. The visitor thus finds himself between two worlds: the future of space research and the past, which he named the same cosmic events and planets on the basis of myths.

...

then METABOLIC PERSPECTIVE...

https://www.gamu.cz/en/the-metabolic-perspective/

The “metabolic perspective” begins with the idea that the human economy is merely a continuation of the natural economy by other means, to the extent that terms such as ’logistics’ or ’infrastructure’ can be applied equally well to industrial parks and ecosystems, to the production and transportation of goods, as well as to photosynthesis and food chains. But what if we were to begin considering human culture and communication as part of the planet’s natural metabolisms? Would we not find around us animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, inanimate objects and entire communities of organisms that are constantly speaking to us, showing us something, warning us?

https://youtu.be/qrg6gzzBnhE

[niminy-piminy]

a type of visual art that can bring a person in jail nowadays...

The painter did not bear the criticism from the owner of the apartment, he sprayed it all in black

It has not paid off for the owner of an apartment in (the North Bohemian city of) Sokolov to criticize the painter.
After telling the craftsman that he was not satisfied with his work, a subsequent surprise awaited him. He then found his apartment all sprayed in black.

November 23, 2021 12:35 PM (mildly edited auto-translation)

The 43-year-old man needed to paint a renovated apartment during September and October, so he found contact on the Internet for the 73-year-old painter.

He agreed with him on the price and paid him a deposit.

"The owner of the apartment paid the suspect a deposit and the rest of the money was to be given to him only after the work had been completed. Then, however, he was apparently not satisfied with the execution of the work and wanted the paint to be repaired, "said regional police spokeswoman Zuzana Týřová.


However, the craftsman was so upset by the criticism of his work that he could not control himself and took on the customer, who did not want to pay the rest of the money before the repair, revenge. He spray-painted black the entire two-room apartment.

“He sprayed the walls, floors, ceilings, windows, but also the kitchen. He also wrote a derogatory message on the wall, "Týřová said.

The police estimate the damage at 40,000 crowns. The painter now faces up to one year in prison for damaging foreign property.

Apartment in Sokolov sprayed in black. (photo: Police of the Czech Republic)

[niminy-piminy]

been today at the exhibition "Frida Kahlo – Her Photos".
https://www.ghmp.cz/en/exhibitions/frid ... otografie/

Frida Kahlo had a very special relationship with photography. Both her father and grandfather were professional photographers, and she herself brought different uses to photography. Among other things, she collected daguerreotypes and postcards from the 19th century, and she kept photographs upon which she put her personal stamp, cutting things out from them, writing dedications on them, and personalizing them as if they were paintings.

The exhibition Frida Kahlo – Her Photos presents a number of images that have been preserved in her estate and have been completely unknown until recently. They are now organized and divided into six thematic sections. The exhibition does not intend to depict Kahlo’s chronological biography, but rather to exhibit parts of the personal history of this artist, of the country and time period in which she lived. It is a photographic collage...

allegedly, the "family album" Frida preserved consists of ca. 6000 photos (first time made public in 2007).
currently exhibited collection shows 241 photos (out of those ca. 6000).
out of 241, several are self-portraits of her father Guillermo (professional photographer, viz above).
one of them is a nude pic (allegedly the first male nude photo in the history of Mexican photography) with Frida's handwritten caption "papá" ↓


in the gallery was also screened a doc called FRIDA KAHLO, BETWEEN THE PAIN AND THE PLEASURE (Gabriel Santander, 2015) that is a sequel to the tv series called GREAT PERSONALITIES FROM MEXICAN ART.
i watched all the 52 minutes in the gallery — sat in front of the screen when the film was about in the middle, watched till the end, then waited for a new start and watched till the middle (till my starting point).