David Možný at JOEY RAMONE

Artist: David Možný

Exhibition title: Together We Stay * Divided We Fall

Organized by: JOEY RAMONE and NEVAN CONTEMPO

Venue: JOEY RAMONE, Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Date: November 16, 2019 – January 11, 2020

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and JOEY RAMONE, Rotterdam

JOEY RAMONE is proud to host NEVAN CONTEMPO (Prague, CZ) presenting Together We Stay * Divided We Fall by Czech artist David Možný. The exhibition opens on Saturday 16 November 2019 at 18.00 – 21.00hrs and runs till 11 January 2020.

David Možný’s art work is characterized by his long-term thinking about the impact of the virtual hyperreal space on the manipulation with the physical world. His 3D animations leave the constraints of the projection frame and extend into the installation space. The illusory spaces in Možný’s artworks are part of our daily existence, whether they are historical scenes or contemporary work environment. For David Možný, it is important to examine the surface, which, however, masks the unpleasant social situations (power, manipulations, and limitations).

The interrelationship between the illusion and hard reality (in terms of material or psyche) is typical for Možný. He creates heterotopies, which are often based on our collective past. These are the places we all know, yet few of us have had a chance to visit them. These are our ideas about the places we would hate to visit, although they seem kind of attractive. David Možný often refers to the East European nostalgia, which is not experienced, however (who can remember it?); the situations taking place in its atmosphere are representations taken from contemporary materials.

In Možný’s videos and installations of objects, life has stopped. They are full of space-time distortions, the feeling we know so well from sci-fi films is, however, part of common interiors, whether they are personal (e.g. a room in an apartment) or shared (waiting rooms, corporate open spaces). Spaces created by Možný are capsules with no life, yet we feel its presence and establish intimate communication with it as viewers.

An important theme in Možný’s art work is the feeling of danger. We cannot be sure when associations that we know so well – but that we would rather forget – can emerge. The psychic connection to the exhibition space is established also thanks to David Možný’s carefully designed environment, using modified lighting, or simple labyrinths leading us gradually into our subconscious.

Text by: David Kořínek