Artist: Adam Vačkář
Exhibition title: NANOSPASM LAB
Curated by: Pavel Kubesa
Venue: Galerie NoD, Prague, The Czech Republic
Date: July 24 – September 1, 2019
Photography: images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Galerie NoD
The artistic research of Adam Vačkář is going at a pace that, in some respects, is a clear reference to the field of science. However, Vačkář’s intuitive approach aims at turning this pace upside down, making it circular and giving the elements that make it up and dictate the rhythm an aura that is sacred and at the same time ambiguous.
Vačkář’s works that are featured in this exhibition, in the form of a real terrestrial composition, the simulacrum of a possible future conformation that is irretrievably near and that sees the pollution of the ecosystem as the prevalent aspect, act as a warning signal and proof of a future that is already present.
Perhaps it’s this term “possible ” that represents the key to interpreting Vačkářs work. His entire artistic production is made up of mainly elusive constructions that are the result of a mix of industrial waste like plastic, steel and glass together with natural elements like branches or other parts of trees.
These elements all come from today’s world, although hint at something not quite real yet. The possible for Adam Vačkář is not “possible”, but rather indisputable. The circular movement, far away both in type of approach and in principle from that of science that rather moves based on demonstrations that go along unidirectional lines, makes sure that what is presented before our eyes as a possible future is actually already present, and what is present represents the future.
That’s a glimpse of this composition of simulacrums – a simulacrum, taken from the Latin word “simulacrum”, defines an appearance that does not refer to any underlying reality, and claims to be valid for that same reality – conveyed in the form of a lab of hyperreal leftovers generated by the excesses of consumerism.
The installation work made for this exhibition pays tribute to the aforementioned circular movement: it feels as if you are walking in an alien environment in which every element seems to give off a familiar ambiguity and in which you can feel a rotating wind that constantly recalls the irreparable day-by-day transformation of the terrestrial ecosystem in such a gradual and continuous way that it makes a clear division between present and future impossible.
-Domenico de Chirico, 2019
