Artist: Valentýna Janů
Title: Is Your Blue the Same as Mine?
Co-directed with: Kryštof Hlůže
Curated by: Christina Gigliotti
Screening: October 15 – November 3, 2019
Duration: 12’03”
“Is your blue the same as mine?” the girl asks. Can two pairs of eyes see the same color? Our realities are growing apart, and we each live our lives in our own private dimension. The rhythms of our lives, our emotional expectations, our political beliefs, and our view of ourselves all follow mutually non-intersecting trajectories, an infinite number of which fill the universe. Is there any chance at all of our trajectories connecting? Valentýna Janů’s suggestive video installation features a female protagonist, possibly resembling the “Young Girl,” described in 1999 by the Tiqqun collective as the ultimate symbol and product of capitalist society. However, this girl’s seductive powers are not reduced to mere consuming. She keeps company to the exhibition visitor, being provocative and alive, yet critically questioning the (artificial) realities she inhabits.
–Karina Kottová
Bio:
The work of Valentýna Janů (b. 1994, lives and works in Prague) can be included in an imagined interdisciplinary anthology of short ontological essays of the new generation. Her conceptual projects explore what things are like and how they appear, as well as how – in this age of social networks – we are capable of communicating with one another about them. Janů’s work translates contemporary structures of feeling into evocative installations playing with our differing perceptions of word and imagery, while oscillating between all to familiar everyday experiences and the grand questions in a life dominated by technology, alienation and overload. Her recent solo exhibitions include I’m sry at The National Gallery in Prague (2018), Salty Mascara at Fait Gallery, Brno (2018) and Is Your Blue The Same As Mine at Prague City Gallery (2018).
