SPECIAL FEATURE: SUMO (CO-EXIST)

Featured Artists: Rebekka Benzenberg, Monika Grabuschnigg, Constantin Hartenstein, Eliška Konečná, Mary-Audrey Ramirez, Adam Christensen, Natalie Perkof, Jānis Dzirnieks, Daria Melnikova, Evita Vasiljeva, Siggi Sekira, Vik Bayer, Anna Bochkova, Karolin Braegger, Emma Hummerhielm Carlén, Kristina Cyan, Nana Dahlin, Pyo E, Felix Grühbaum, Yoko Gwen Halbwidl, Bob Schatzi Hausmann, Florian Hofer, Theresa Katharina Horlacher, Lisa Jäger, Julia Karpova, Adele Knall, Jusun Lee, raúl itamar lima, Taro Meissner, Bianca Phos, Michael Reindel, Jakob Rockenschaub, Alua Sugralimova, Lera Weinrub, Andrea Zabric, Živa Drvarič, Julie Falk, Elisabeth Molin, Elizabeth Orr, Alex Thake, Lauda Vargas, Anna Walther, Anna Ročňová, Vladimíra Večeřová, Ryuha (Atsuo Hukuda, Shuhei Fukuda), Veronika Čechmánková, Martin Dušek, František Felix, Tina Hrevušová, Alžběta Krchová, Olga Krykun, Marcela Putnová, Ezra Šimek, Denisa Štefanigová, Max Vajt

Featured venues: Berlinskej Model, Anton Janizewski Gallery, gallerytalk.net, hunt kastner, City Surfer Office, 427 Gallery, Polansky, POP-UP Galerie AVU, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Galerie 35m2, Sharp Projects, Kvalitář, Concept Space, Světova 1, Queer Space Network

Date: September 1 – October 14, 2022

Photography: images courtesy of the artists, SUMO and galleries

The third edition of the international gallery exchange SUMO Prague 2022 brings exhibitions, performances, and lectures that have developed through cooperation between international partners in the field of contemporary art.

SUMO Prague 2022, subtitled CO-EXIST, take place from September 1 to October 14, 2022, in Prague. In this year’s edition of the project, which focuses on international gallery cooperation and participation, twelve Prague galleries will present a diverse program highlighting the most current trends in contemporary art. The opening take place over the course of three days, from Thursday to Saturday, September 1 to 3, with openings and accompanying programs in each of the individual exhibition spaces.

After two years of SUMO with the subtitle The Odd Year, the organizers have selected a new name: CO-EXIST. This year’s theme hints at a transformation in the perception of the new present and human reciprocity in light of recent and current events, which have also left an indelible mark on artistic creation. Within the scope of the show, exhibitions, performances, lectures, and other events will take place in the spaces of the participating galleries, presenting the works of both established and up-and-coming Czech and international artists.

The show started with openings and an accompanying program on Thursday, September 1,at the galleries Berlinskej model, City Surfer Office, Galerie 35m2, Kvalitář, Polansky, POP-UP Gallery AVU, and Světova 1.

The Danish gallery Sharp Projects was invited to Prague by the space 35m2. Their exhibition Compact. Time. Constraint. includes sculptures and sculptural installations based on the dimensions of a standard A4 sheet of paper. The limitation of the format is applied to beings or materials that take on different forms.

The gallery City Surfer Office invites visitors to an exhibition entitled Soap Opera, which they have prepared in cooperation with the Latvian gallery 427. Soap Opera mixes the lightness of Jānis Dzirnieks’s regenerated pop-ups, the drama of Evita Vasiljeva’s organic surfaces, and the calmness of Daria Melnikova’s performative gestures.

POP-UP Gallery AVU complements SUMO’s diverse program with a collaboration with the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. In the exhibition Remember Teach Nature, students from the Sculpture and Installation Studio and the Art in Public Space Studio explore the significance of nature for artistic creation. Their works are inspired by visits to Austrian national parks and interviews with scientists and park rangers.

After four years, Japanese artists Atsuo Hukuda and Shuhei Fukuda are returning to the Czech Republic with the exhibition Monochrome. For the gallery Kvalitář they have prepared a joint project that refers to one of the traditions of Japanese art that has been appropriated into the field of contemporary art. The exhibition is a collaboration with the Japanese gallery Concept Space, which represents the artists.

Other artists who will be presenting their work in Prague include Rebekka Benzenberg (DE), Monika Grabuschnigg (AT), Constantin Hartenstein (DE), Eliška Konečná (CZ), and Mary-Audrey Ramirez (LU). Their group exhibition entitled Scary Good is being prepared by curator Anna Meinecke and the Berlin gallery Anton Janizewski at the Prague space Berlinskej Model. This will be followed in late September/early October by an exhibition of two Danish/Greenlandic artists, Martin Brandt Hansen (GL/DK) and Rasmus Lyberth (GL/DK), in collaboration with Salon 75 from Copenhagen.

The gallery Polansky will present the work of Siggi Sekira in an exhibition entitled The Forest Song: All of Me Wants All of You. The artist, originally from Odessa, Ukraine, and currently based in Vienna, works with ceramic sculptures and drawings. Sekira draws on the Slavic mythology of the Wiener Werkstätte from around the year 1900, the Soviet avant-garde, and the influx of Western pop culture after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The exhibition were accompanied by a performance by Danielle Pamp.

In collaboration with the Queer Spaces Network, Světova 1 has prepared the exhibition Ennui, which will focus on the “experience of capitalist (post)modernity – the alienation and anomie putatively experienced by the much-derided bourgeoise,” as it was articulated by the French writer Gustave Flaubert in the early nineteenth century. The participating artists – Veronika Čechmánková, Martin Dušek, František Felix, Tina Hrevušová, Alžběta Krchová, Olga Krykun, Marcela Putnová, Ezra Šimek, Denisa Štefanigová, and Max Vajt – will thus explore another topic in their work as part of Světova 1’s ongoing curatorial research project entitled As We Grow. The exhibition opening will include a performance on Thursday at 17:00.

On Friday, September 2, took place discussion on current institutional practices and future strategies for art mediation entitled Give Me the Now, initiated by the Lucie Drdova Gallery. The speakers will be independent curator and author Tevž Logar, gallerist and founder of Warsaw’s Leto Gallery Marta Kołakowska, and gallerist and founder of Vienna’s Exile Gallery Christian Siekmeier. The discussion will be moderated by Jen Kratochvil, the director of Kunsthalle Bratislava. The venue for the event is Kunsthalle Praha.

Guided tours of the exhibitions were followed by a lecture by Franz Thalmair, curator of the Museum of Modern Art (mumok) in Vienna at the Center for Contemporary Arts Prague . The lecture is entitled “From Collaboration to Contamination,” and it explores the artistic phenomena in contemporary visual culture that bring together different, sometimes contradictory entities.

On the second day of the festival tookplace a performative opening of the exhibition will showcase the work of multidisciplinary artist Adam Christensen, who works with textile, video, installation, and performance. Through multimedia, he mediates emotional and physical experiences and builds spaces or “stages” where pain, joy, memory, and identity play out. In parallel, the gallery is opening an exhibition in its projekt_room by Brno-based artist Natalie Perkof entitled Cabinet of Miniatures and Delights.

This year SUMO Prague join in the first edition of PRAGUE ART WEEK 22, which runs from September 9 to 15. The joint program includes a performance by Luki Essender, curated by Romana Drdová. The performance will take place on September 13 at 18:00 at Václav Havel Square (the piazzetta of the National Theatre).

The opening and guided tour of Bora Akinciturk’s exhibition The Narcissist will take place on 14 September 2022 at 19:00 at the Holešovická Šachta gallery.

The exhibitions will then continue until mid-October according to the programs of the individual galleries and the schedule published at www.sumoprague.cz.

This art show focusing on cooperation with foreign partners is being initiated by the Alliance of Czech Contemporary Art Galleries for the third time under the name SUMO Prague, although in total it is the event’s fifth year. The aim of the project is to present new forms of contemporary art to the local audience. SUMO creates a network of artists, curators, critics, and other actors in the global art scene and fosters international cooperation in institutional practice.

The first year of SUMO 2022 will see the participation of the following Prague galleries hosting international participants:

Berlinskej Model: Scary Good

Participating galleries: Anton Janizewski Gallery (DE), gallerytalk.net (DE)

Artists: Rebekka Benzenberg (DE), Monika Grabuschnigg (AT), Constantin Hartenstein (DE), Eliška Konečná (CZ), Mary-Audrey Ramirez (LU)

Curated by: Anna Meinecke

Berlinskej Model is a non-commercial gallery founded in 2011. The gallery organizes several times a month one-day events/exhibitions in the space in Ppl. Sochora in Prague’s Holešovice. Berlinskej Model regularly organizes exhibitions of domestic and international artists and publishes the magazine RAJØN with distribution in Prague and Berlin.

For the third edition of SUMO, Berlínskej Model hosts Scary Good, a curatorial project by the Berlin-based contemporary art gallery Anton Janizewski and the online magazine gallerytalk.net.

There is pain and excitement in creation. As soon as an idea starts manifesting into
something that feels too good, one is drawn to distrust the good feeling. More often than not, anticipated greatness reveals itself as trivial rather than extraordinary.

While the truly remarkable in its abstraction is hard to work toward, coolness is attainable as a composition of codes. Executed with nonchalance, a carefully curated and controlled aesthetic protects one’s true desires. Under the shield of recognition pursuing the promising appears to be less frightening albeit dangerous.

The exhibition is both an homage to and a deconstruction of the contemporary cool, toying with clichés of roughness while ultimately neglecting them. Rebekka Benzenberg (DE), Monika Grabuschnigg (AT), Constantin Hartenstein (DE), Eliška Konečná (CZ) and Mary-Audrey Ramirez (LU) draw from fetish and fitness culture, referencing video game creatures, bended bodies, and deadly fruit. Their art and personas merge into what presents as an inviolable surface under which true dedication, doubt, critique, tenderness, and vision are to be discovered.

Scary Good is a flirt with the beauty of darkness, taking the world’s wickedness as a starting point to tap into a deeper examination of shared hopes and fears. It allows within the wish for contentment a craving for triumph. On the off chance that scary good feeling might just hold true.

Scary Good, 2022, exhibition view, Berlinskej Model, Prague

Left: Eliška Konečná, Květ (Floral), 2022, upholstery, embriodery; french polish, 75 × 105 cm. Right: Rebekka Benzenberg, The Laugh of the Medusa, 2022, mirror, resin extasy pills, 66 × 48 cm

Left: Rebekka Benzenberg, The Laugh of the Medusa, 2022, mirror, resin extasy pills, 66 × 48 cm. Right:Constantin Hartenstein, Von Hinten, 2022, Epoxy resin, GDR pigment, steel, 48 × 73 × 1 cm

Left: Eliška Konečná, Fontana (Fountaine), 2022, upholstery, embriodery; french polish, 75 × 105 cm. Back right: Rebekka Benzenberg, like baby needs mom, 2022, grid and nylon down suit, 200 × 200 cm

Left: Mary-Audrey Ramirez, Horse Head Nebula (Nr.1), Weapon (Nr.1), Weapon (Nr.2), 2020, metal, fluff, pvc fabric, nylon fabric, webbing. Right: Eliška Konečná, Fontana (Fountaine), 2022, upholstery, embriodery; french polish, 75 × 105 cm

Rebekka Benzenberg, like baby needs mom, 2022, grid and nylon down suit, 200 × 200 cm

Monika Grabuschnigg, Decade of Devotion, 2021, Aluminium, glazed ceramic, 7 × 123 × 51 cm

Mary-Audrey Ramirez, Horse Head Nebula w grey QT Critter, 2020, metal, fluff, pvc fabric, nylon fabric, webbing, 250 × 35 × 45 cm

Constantin Hartenstein, Von Hinten, 2022, Epoxy resin, GDR pigment, steel, 48 × 73 × 1 cm

Constantin Hartenstein, Warmer Sommer, 2022, Epoxy resin, GDR pigment, steel, 97 × 73 × 2 cm

Monika Grabuschnigg, Love (e), 2022, Pencil on paper, 47 × 35 cm

Constantin Hartenstein, ADJUST, performance documentation @ Galerie im Turm Berlin

Mary-Audrey Ramirez, 2022, exhibition view, Berlinskej Model, Prague

hunt kastner: The Wind Swallowed My Words

Artist: Adam Christensen (DK/UK), Natalie Perkof

Curated by: Caroline Krzyszton

hunt kastner was opened in 2006 in response to a need for more professional representation of Czech artists both locally and abroad. At the time the gallery was founded there was no established tradition of commercial galleries in the Czech Republic presenting an international program and supporting the production and exhibition of new contemporary work in a private gallery setting, or who actively represented and promoted the artists’ work abroad. There were also very few Czech artists with any international recognition and no local commercial platform to support the younger generation of artists. Our aim has been to establish a reputable commercial gallery with a high-quality international program.

Adam Christensen (*1979) is a multidisciplinary artist who works with textile, video, installation and performance to convey experiences both emotional and physical. He engages the theatrical as well as the everyday through heartfelt and emotionally charged performances, mixing gender, personal stories, childhood memories, conflicted and brutal realities. He interacts with the audience to develop new lyrical narratives, often by singing with the accordion and reading out short stories or anecdotes. A primary concern of Christensen’s work is staging and framing of narratives and how pain, joy, memory and identity play out in these spaces or ‘stages’. Adam Christensen is a graduate of the European Film School in Ebeltoft and Goldsmiths in London. He has previously exhibited at Overgaden Institute of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen and Baltic Triennial 13, Vilnius, Tallin and Riga, as well as Almanac, David Roberts Art Foundation, Southard Reid, Institute of Contemporary Arts, Hollybush Gardens, and Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art. He also performs with the music project Ectopia.

Natalie Perkof (*1979) explores the limitations and possibilities of form and material through painting and conceptual installations. Cabinet of Miniatures and Delights presents a playful reflection and introspective exploration of female sexuality and its connection to nature. In a series of new large-scale carbon fibre canvases combined with a botanical sculpture, the artist employs symbolic archetypes of sexuality as part of an intimate inner dialog that reflects upon how changing gender tropes impact the on-going balancing act between sexuality and physicality, and the role of instinct, intuition, nurturing and creativity in the female psyche. Natalie is a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music in Ostrava and Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno.

Adam Christensen: The Wind Swallowed My Words, 2022, exhibition view, hunt kastner, Prague. Photo: Ondřej Polák

Natalie Perkof, Cabinet of Miniatures and Delights, 2022, exhibition view, hunt kastner, Prague. Photo: Ondřej Polák

City Surfer Office: Soap Opera

Artists: Jānis Dzirnieks, Daria Melnikova, Evita Vasiljeva

Participating gallery: 427 Gallery (LV)

Curated by: Kaspars Groševs

The City Surfer Office Gallery was established in 2011. The exhibition programme is aimed at the youngest generation of artists and provides them with a space to realise solo exhibition projects. The gallery also functions as a base for artists – in 2021 the gallery introduced the Temporary Studios project, where invited artists use the exhibition space as their studio to prepare site-specific exhibitions. The curatorial team consists of Max Dvořák, Pamela Kuťáková, Světlana Malinová and Vojtěch Novák.

“Soap Opera” presents itself as a combination of three Latvian born artists who each perceives materials and their collusions/confluxes as formative and structural tools that navigate the artists in their creative endeavors. „Soap Opera“ fuses the lightness of regenerated pop-ups of Jānis Dzirnieks, the drama of organic surfaces by Evita Vasiļjeva, and the serenity of performative gestures in Daria Melnikova’s works.

Jānis Dzirnieks, Daria Melnikova, Soap Opera, 2022, exhibition view, City Surfer Office, Prague. Photo: Světlana Malinová

Evita Vasiljeva, Soap Opera, 2022, exhibition view, City Surfer Office, Prague. Photo: Světlana Malinová

Jānis Dzirnieks, Soap Opera, 2022, exhibition view, City Surfer Office, Prague. Photo: Světlana Malinová

Daria Melnikova, Evita Vasiljeva, Jānis Dzirnieks, Soap Opera, 2022, exhibition view, City Surfer Office, Prague. Photo: Světlana Malinová

Evita Vasiljeva, Jānis Dzirnieks, Soap Opera, 2022, exhibition view, City Surfer Office, Prague. Photo: Světlana Malinová

Polansky: The Forest Song: All of Me Wants All of You

Artist: Siggi Sekira (UA/AT)

Polansky is a contemporary art gallery founded by Filip Polanský in 2012. It focuses on local and international contemporary artists. Polansky is situated in two locations in Prague and Brno. The gallery produces around ten exhibitions each year.

Siggi Sekira (b. 1987 in Odessa, Ukraine, lives and works in Vienna) works with ceramic sculpture and colored pencil drawings. Sekira draws on the Slavic mythology of the Wiener Werkstätten around 1900, Soviet avantgarde, and the influx of the Western pop culture after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Siggi Sekira, The Forest Song: All of Me Wants All of You, 2022, exhibition view, Polansky, Prague. Photo: Jan Kolský

POP-UP Galerie AVU: Remember Teach Nature

Artists: Vik Bayer, Anna Bochkova, Karolin Braegger, Emma Hummerhielm Carlén, Kristina Cyan, Nana Dahlin, Pyo E, Felix Grühbaum, Yoko Gwen Halbwidl, Bob Schatzi Hausmann, Florian Hofer, Theresa Katharina Horlacher, Lisa Jäger, Julia Karpova, Adele Knall, Jusun Lee, raúl itamar lima, Taro Meissner, Bianca Phos, Michael Reindel, Jakob Rockenschaub, Alua Sugralimova, Lera Weinrub, Andrea Zabric

Participating gallery: Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (AT)

Installation team: Kristina Cyan, Julia Karpova and Jakob Rockenschaub

In 2021, the AVU Gallery opened the AVU POP-UP Gallery in Prague’s Žižkov neighborhood with the goal of making its program even more accessible to the public.

The AVU Gallery was founded in 1993 as an exhibition space for students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Over time, it expanded its domain, becoming a space for the presentation of contemporary art by the incoming generation of artists in a wide variety of contexts, whether it is the work of students and graduates of other art schools or that of foreign artists.

For a long time, when I was a small child, aged 6 or 7, I thought the world was made up of fragments. There was my parents backyard, a stone-panelled patio with chairs painted green and a luscious constellation of fruit trees that bore no fruit. There was the school bus with blue and red spotted seats that made you sit crooked, caved in by time and the many behinds that sat in those very seats decades before I was born. There was the beach, the epitome of nature in my eyes and the plastic gas station with a Rosenberger restaurant inside, which then mysteriously grew up to be a McDonald’s the gates of which became the portal that I travelled through to go on my summer vacation. The beach was my favourite place. I still remember the smell of the waves and the sea salt eating away at my skin in the sun. I hated those hole-in-the-floor toilets that were a compulsory experience with many Mediterranean resorts at the time. Now I rather prefer them.

With the passing of time I find myself reminiscing in a bar, swishing my drink of choice (Blaufränkisch) in my mouth before I swallow. The rich, spicy taste is subtle, and I look forward to these moments with great joy, like the expectancy of sliding into freshly washed sheets at nightfall. The climate monster under my bed already existed back then, we called it Global Warming. These conversations about ecology and climate change have become so omnipresent in recent years, looming above my head everywhere I go, that I myself, have started to forget the true meaning of this crisis: I stopped being alarmed. I turn to my friend sitting across from me with this dilemma, “By the time this planet becomes uninhabitable, we can just move somewhere else, science is working on it” they answer me, as though moving to Mars is as easy as going to the beach. The music in the bar slows and the dancing lights overhead bring my attention to a disco ball, I watch it spin like a merry-go-round, marching on without a break like the planet with live on. The sparkles of the ball blanket the faces of my friends, the bartender, the stereo… the rising temperatures, the resulting pandemicene, the never ending wars that bring us closer to annihilation are ever present in the atmosphere like the hum of a fridge when you’re sleeping in the kitchen. We live in a growth-based economy that needs steady consumption in order to grow. Mass consumption requires mass production. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Even when it all fails and science comes up with a protective, dome-like paradise city without pollution or climate issues outside of our planet, it’ll only be accessible to the 1%. The rest of us will be back on Earth.

Remember Teach Nature, 2022, exhibition view, POP-UP Galerie AVU, Prague

Galerie 35m2: Compact. Time. Constraint.

Artists: Živa Drvarič, Julie Falk, Elisabeth Molin, Elizabeth Orr, Alex Thake, Lauda Vargas, Anna Walther, Anna Ročňová, Vladimíra Večeřová

Participating gallery: Sharp Projects (DK)

Curated by: Ilethia Sharp

The 35m2 is an artist run space and non-profit gallery for contemporary artistic activity. Since 2006 gallery has been directed by artists Petra Steinerová and Michal Pěchouček. In 2015 Tereza Záchová and František Fekete joined their collective. The gallery is focused mainly on progressive and young visual artists creating their solo projects, sometimes even their first ones. Nevertheless its program also provides a place for more established and experienced authors including international ones. The curatorial team gives an opportunity as free as possible to create and experiment to artists and emphasizes the importance of an originality of their artistic approach and visual thinking. The dialogue between curator and artist plays a key role within the process of making an exhibition. A selection of artists tries to be as open as can be regarding contemporary art.

Compact. Time. Constraint. exhibits sculptures and sculptural installations around the measurements of the standardized A4 sheet of paper. Although the size limitations were created for convenience, the compactness of the works exhibited are not all physically or visually uniform. The constraining theme is imposed upon a being or material which takes on various forms. Time passing is indicated with clock hands and rolling tides both impling repetition; also found in artistic practices that require punchering, folding, angling, spinning, cutting, and sculpting. Works exhibited range from self-standing and wall-hanging sculptures, video and other small-scale installations. This group show is inspired by the previous exhibition at Sharp Projects titled, Small Sculptures, featuring sculptures all within the dimensions of 20 x 15 x 30 cm – conceptualized from the belief that everyone should own a piece of art.

About Sharp Projects

Sharp Projects is an art gallery and curatorial project space in Copenhagen, Denmark founded by African-American independent curator Ilethia Sharp. As an independent art gallery, Sharp Projects invites internationally-based artists and curators alike to exhibit diversified concepts; with overlapping artistic practices that work through materiality and objecthood. Sharp’s interest in transnational parallels in contemporary art aesthetics and narratives indicate the focus on including artists based internationally; who would otherwise not be plurally conceptualized. Founded by a non-native, the gallery is an inevitable response to exclusionary tactics. Extended curatorial projects aim to navigate historical and experimental notions found in exhibition-making by prompting interdisciplinary collaborations of appropriated sculpture, design, and objects.

Compact. Time. Constraint., 2022, exhibition view, Galerie 35m2 & Sharp Projects

Anna Ročňová, Glass, 2015, Glass, stone, paint 120 x 30 x 40 cm

Anna Walther, White Cube Trama 2022, Steel, 60 cm

Lauda Vargas, American Phantoms 1, 2022, Baseball cards, staples Dimensions variable

Julie Falk, Little soul, little drifter, 2022, Aluminum Dimensions variable

Anna Ročňová, Net, 2016, Iron, fruit nets 160 x 50 x 50 cm; Živa Drvarič, Rendez-vous, 2022, Two sets of clock hands 13. 5 x 22 cm

Elisabeth Molin, Dreams that makes you sea sick, 2021, Cardboard box, monitor, cable, HD Video 2.35 min loop, 11 x 32 x 22 cm

Vladimíra Večeřová, The space between categories, 2022, Cotton yarn, 300 cm

Alex Thake, Hopechest, 2022, Plastic, plexiglass, steel, vent, speaker, 17 x 15 x 17 cm

Kvalitář: Monochrome

Artists: Ryuha (Atsuo Hukuda, Shuhei Fukuda)

Participating gallery: Concept Space (JP)

Curated by: Michal Škoda

Kvalitar Gallery has a specific place in the Czech art scene, on the background of the same name architectural studio, it has been presenting the best of fine art and design for more than ten years. Kvalitar has prepared a series of curated exhibitions that focus not only on art, architecture and design, but also on the interconnection of art and science.

After four years, Japanese artists Atsuo Hukuda and Shuhei Fukuda are returning to the Czech Republic to once again present a joint project at the Kvalitář Gallery, referring to one of the traditions of Japanese art within the framework of contemporary art, thus following up on their very successful exhibition RYUHA from 2018.

Ryuha (Atsuo Hukuda, Shuhei Fukuda), Monochrome, 2022, exhibition view, Kvalitář, Prague. Photo: Eva Rybářová

Světova 1: Ennui

Artists: Veronika Čechmánková, Martin Dušek, František Felix, Tina Hrevušová, Alžběta Krchová, Olga Krykun, Marcela Putnová, Ezra Šimek, Denisa Štefanigová, Max Vajt

Participating gallery: Queer Space Network

Producers: Rivers, Vorlíček a Xu

SVĚTOVA 1 is a platform and a gallery focusing on artistic practice, expression, and projects in nearby zones. It is a holistic entity that through shows and various public programs reacts to the current events in the world. It’s not just important what it presents, but also how it presents. It questions the forms and views the process as a crucial part of the outcome. Its goal is to fully express, achieve full sustainability, practice radical inclusivity and offer a refuge for those in need.

In cooperation with the Queer Spaces Network, the exhibition “Ennui” will focus on the topic first envisioned by the French writer Gustave Flaubert back in the early 19th century. Participating artists focus in their practices on this “experience of capitalist (post)modernity – the alienation and anomie putatively experienced by the much-derided bourgeoise” and as such explore another topic within the ongoing curatorial research “As we grow”. One that is so prevalent in the Světova programme this year.

From left: Denisa Štefanigová, ‘Brána’, (2022), acrylic on canvas, 80 x 60 cm; And Denisa Štefanigová, ‘Pták mě kousl, osvoboď mě’, (2022), acrylic on canvas, 80 x 60 cm. — Both paintings courtesy of the artist. Photograph: Karolína Matušková © SVĚTOVA 1 AS

Olga Krykun, ‘IV. Remembering the old fluff’, (2020), acrylic on canvas, 67 x 75 cm. — Courtesy of the artist and SVĚTOVA 1. Photograph: Karolína Matušková © SVĚTOVA 1 AS