Apparatus For a Utopian Image
September 21 - October 29, 2016
Curated by: Pavla Sceranková and Dušan Zahoranský, with Tereza Jindrová
ARTIST INFORMATION
Matěj Al-Ali
Keren Benbenisty
Keren Benbenisty is a conceptual artist who uses various mediums, drawing in particular, to explore the notions of contemporary language in relation to its archaic provenance. Benbenisty was born in Israel (1977) and moved to Paris in 1998. She graduated from the Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux-Arts de Paris in 2004, during which she also attended California Institute of the Arts (Cal’Arts). She was a resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine (2009) and at The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in Brooklyn (2011). She moved to New York in 2011, and currently lives and works there. Benbenisty`s work was recently exhibited at Cuny Graduate Center for Humanities in New York City, The Tel-Aviv Museum for Modern Art, The Artist House in Jerusalem, Francesca Antonini Gallery in Rome, Human Resources in Los Angeles, El Museo de Los Sures and NurtureArt in Brooklyn, NY. Her first artist book A A O UE was published this year with Sternthal Books. Keren Benbenisty is currently at Residency Unlimited (RU) for three-month residency with support from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) ArtWorks grant and a matching fund from the Dedalus Foundation.
Tyler Coburn
Tyler Coburn is an artist and writer based in New York, working in performance, installation, writing, and sound. His work critically engages trends in computing , manufacturing, and urban design, investigating contemporary tensions between waged and leisure time; the self and the social media public; and the virtual world and its complex material infrastructures. Coburn received a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University and an MFA from the University of Southern California. He also served as a fellow in the Whitney Independent Study Program from 2014-2015. His work has been been presented at South London Gallery; Kunstverein Munich; Kunsthalle Wien; CCA Glasgow; Western Front, Vancouver; Grazer Kunstverein; UCCA, Beijing; LAXART, Los Angeles; and Sculpture Center, New York. Coburn’s writing has appeared in Frieze, e-flux journal, Dis, Mousse, and Rhizome, among others.
David Court
David Court is an artist and writer based in New York and Columbus, Ohio. Recent and upcoming exhibitions, performances, and publications include 8eleven (Toronto), C Magazine, Knockdown Center (New York), Museo de la Ciudad Querétaro (Mexico), PLOT, Proxy (Providence), and Skol Center des Arts Actuels (Montreal). Court has been Artist-in-Residence at the Banff Center, in the Workspace program of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Art’s SHIFT program, and Brown University’s Interrupt:3 conference. Court works with selection, formatting and narration as modes of expression in relation to exhibition as a genre of cultural production.
Sean Fader
Kara Hearn
Kara Hearn is an interdisciplinary video artist. Her work has been screened, exhibited, and performed nationally and internationally at venues such as MoMA, SFMOMA, Bluecoat Gallery, DiverseWorks, New Orleans Museum of Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, White Columns, Berkeley Art Museum, Pacific Film Archive, Walker Art Center, and Dallas Video Festival. Hearn was a fellow in the Core Program of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and has completed residencies at Recess and EFA Project Space in New York City. Born in Oklahoma, Hearn currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Zebadiah Keneally
Zebadiah Keneally (the Hamburger Vampire) is an interdisciplinary artist based in New York City. He has performed at Mixed Greens, the Wassaic Project, the Manhattan Neighborhood Network and WNYC’s Greene Space. Recent works include a performance at MoMA PS1 during the New York Art Book Fair and a solo exhibition at Outlet Fine Art in Bushwick. He has published several titles with Endless Editions. Keneally’s drawings, paintings, sculptures, videos and books have been shown in New York City, Los Angeles, Detroit, Ho Chi Minh City, Kuwait City and Ljubljana, Solvenia. His books and publications are in the collections of the MoMA Library, the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Public Library Special Collections. His books are available at the Whitney Museum of American Art Bookstore and Printed Matter.
Barbora Kleinhamplová
Barbora Kleinhamplová (*1984) is an artist living and working in Prague. Barboras‘ work is rooted in the relationship of human existence and the contemporary political and economic institutions. She comments on different layers of society, using associations and metaphors. For some time it has been her overarching aim to pose questions like what is a society, how it works, what are its constitutive elements, what are its illnesses, its emotions, its future or a situation of an individual in the middle of it.
In her work she borrows concepts and methods from different sciences such as anthropology or biology, not in a strict sense but rather as a common element of art practice. Recently she takes advantage of a strategy we might call constructed or staged situation. The script is often derived from an existing format of group interaction (therapy, coaching session etc.). Performative dimension of some of her projects try to accent the symbolic role of the body politics in the economic and power system.
Her work has been exhibited widely in the Czech Republic as well as internationally - including this years Gwangju Biennale, New Museum, Astrup Farnley Museet, Jakarta Biennale or Autocenter Berlin.
She received a scholarship within the framework of the residency programme of MMCA, Seoul, South Korea in 2015 and Gasworks, London in 2016. In 2015 she won the Jindřich Chalupecký Award.
Alena Kotzmannová
"I work with photography, video installations and site-specific installations. My most recent work deals with expressive possibilities and paradoxes of the photographic image. I use photography not as a tool for capturing the world, but for constructing parallel worlds as some sort of mirror of the world of everyday life. For me photography is a layer of memory. The subject is not the photographed objects and situations, but the way of seeing and perceiving."
Václav Magid
"Coming up with a programme of social change and calling it a “utopia” means announcing in advance that it cannot be implemented, and that you never even wanted that in the first place. Bonus points if you’re conjuring up the spirit of the “avant-garde” at the same time – that means you are sterilising your own political imagination, and replacing it with mourning for moments of missed opportunity.
Seeing that the future is once again a buzzword, I too sometimes try to assemble a sort of vision out of previous failures. But usually I get dizzy half an hour into it; I end up sleeping all day.
The change has to begin at the level of the tiniest particles our bodies are made of, and the basic functions taking place in these bodies. Therefore, the first step is to stop breathing the air your neighbours breathe, as that is where support for the status quo breeds. Try breathing something else – if you can."
Tomáš Moravec
Tomáš Moravec (*born 1985 in Prague) gained his Master in Arts (MgA.) at the inter-media department of Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czech Republic in 2012. His works could be described as „spatial situations“, mostly realized by means of object, video and installation. Common projects with Matej Al-Ali, Petr Dub or Roman Štětina than promote the open space to comment on the artistic collaboration, or react towards public space. Moravec was a finalist of Jindřich Chalupecký Award (2008), Exit Prize (2009) and received Václav Chad Prize (2015). Moravec has received fellowships from Visegrad Artist Residence Program in Budapest (2011) and New York (2013) and Das Weise Haus Vienna (2013). His works has been displayed in both Czech and international context (Biennale Liége, BB15 Linz, Trafó Gallery Budapest, James and Audrey Foster Prize Boston, Triangle Arts NYC, CCC Peking). Author currently lives and works in Prague.
“One of the unifying motifs in my current works and also previous projects is a ‘change’. It could be understood as a natural quality, the production of time and space, but also as a conscious attempt to deflect a routine perception. Whether considering the deformation of shapes, changes in visual perspective, layouts or frameworks within which we move, I try to accentuate a certain ambiguity in the perception of these categories. I am interested in that span of immediate reality, which appears to be stable, but has the possibility of transformation at the same time.”
Freya Powell
Freya Powell received an MFA from Hunter College (2012) and a BA from Bard College (2006.) Powell’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the #1 Cartagena, the First International Biennial of Cartagena des Indias, Colombia; Bronx Museum (NY); Socrates Sculpture Park (NY); Emerson Dorsch (FL); OMI International Arts Center (NY); Arts Santa Monica, (Barcelona, Spain) among other venues. She has participated in artist residencies at Socrates Sculpture Park, Vermont Studio Center, Post-Contemporary, and the AIM program of the Bronx Museum. Powell received a William T. Graf Travel grant in 2011.
Markéta Othová
Immigrating from Poland to Germany, Elisabeth Smolarz grew up on the cusps of two different cultures affected by a communist and democratic system. Consequently, she became involved in the idea of how consciousness and perception is formed by one’s surroundings.
Elisabeth Smolarz
Immigrating from Poland to Germany, Elisabeth Smolarz grew up on the cusps of two different cultures affected by a communist and democratic system. Consequently, she became involved in the idea of how consciousness and perception is formed by one’s surroundings.
Magda Stanová
Tomáš Svoboda
Tomáš Svoboda (born 1984 in Pilsen, Czech Republic) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1996 to 2003 and at Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe in 1999.
Whether working with text of sound, Tomáš Svoboda creates installations or documents e-mail correspondence. He is monitoring a system. His approach to art follows from conceptually-focused semiotic research from the 1960s. However, contrary to this tradition, which refers primarily to the convention of imaging itself, Svoboda’s approach expresses an interest in the possibilities of communication, (de)formed on the basis of a pre-established logic. He often researches non-narrative text and its ability to carry information, or eventually relationships between text and image, nor does he forget social topics, media analysis and diverse commercial information.
He was a co-founder of Display Gallery in 2001 and since 2007 he´s a member of the board of tranzitdisplay Gallery in Prague. He was a finalist in the Jindrich Chalupecky Award in 2006. He has presented his works in a number of solo exhibitions, including Nevan Contempo, Prague (2015), tranzitdisplay, Prague (2015), Fajt Gallery, Brno (2014), the Moravian Gallery in Brno (2011), The City Gallery Prague (2011), Stadtgalerie Bern (2004). He has also participated in collective exhibitions in the National Gallery in Prague (2012), Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris (2012), Galerie Antje Wachs, Berlin (2011), Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw (2009) or M’ars Gallery, Moscow (2008).
Danielle Tegeder
Dannielle Tegeder was born in Peekskill, NY. She received her BFA from the State University of New York at Purchase, and an MFA from The Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally in Paris, Houston, Los Angeles, Berlin, Chicago, and New York and has been the recipient of many residencies and grants, including Yaddo, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Smack Mellon Studio Program, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Studio Fellowship. Several of her works are in the Collection at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, and The Weatherspoon Museum of Art in Greensboro, NC. She has upcoming exhibitions at Johannes Vogt in New York City, Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco, Frist museum in Nashville, and Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago.
Jiří Thýn
Jiří Thýn (born 1977 in Prague) studied at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague from 1999 to 2006 and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 2002 to 2003; since 2013 works on his PhD studies in the Photography studio at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague. Since 2014, he has been a teacher at Prague Film and TV Academy, Department of Photography.
In his work Jiří Thýn explores the possibilities of photography and tests the boundaries between the photographed and the seen. Though he classifies his photographs into cycles, he does not create large series of pictures on one theme. He uses a cycle as the framework for examining a certain problematic, which he shows from various perspectives. At his exhibitions he combines photographs of various formats with three-dimensional objects and creates a rhythmicised whole, where the interstices intensify the communication. He uncovers photography in order to show what predetermines all work in this medium. In his work the photographic tradition is unobtrusively linked to contemporary post-conceptualism.
Besides other residencies he attended a residency program at Triangle Arts Center & Futura Center for Contemporay Art in New York and the CEAAC’s International Artist Residency Program in Strasbourg. He was a finalist in the Jindrich Chalupecky Award in 2011 and 2012. He received the Artist has a Price Award 2011 in the category Best exhibition of the year. He has presented his works in a number of solo exhibitions, including the Brno House of Arts (2011), The City Gallery Prague (2011), The Moravian Gallery in Brno (2010), hunt kastner Gallery (2009). He has also participated in collective exhibitions in Kisterem Gallery, Budapest (2013), NUTUREart Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2012), National Gallery in Prague (2012), Brot Kunsthalle,Vienna (2010) and Casino Luxembourg, forum d'art contemporain, Luxembourg (2010).