The Brno House of Art, House of the Lords of Kunstat, 14 December 2004–31 January 2005; Open Archive of the 1990s in Futura, Galerie Futura, Prague, 17 February–1 May 2005. Curator Pavlina Morganova. In collaboration with the AVU Research Centre and the Brno House of Art
A collective exhibition of Czech Artists of the late 1990s
Invitation Card
Exhibiting artists:
Zbyněk Baladrán – Kamera skura – Krištof Kintera – Lenka Klodová – Pavel Kopřiva – Alena Kotzmannová – Ján Mančuška – Jan Nálevka – Michal Pěchouček- Pavel Ryška – Tomáš Vaněk
For some words, it is hard to find an exact equivalent in other languages. We can come up with a complex paraphrase, but not a single precise word. This is the case with the English word ‘insiders’. They are members of a certain closed club, a group, a profession or even a broader community. In short, they know the rules and the context of their society, they know how to move about in it and they declare their allegiance to it.
The contemporary Czech art scene, or at least, the part of it that is interested in contemporary art, is so small and closed as to be essentially a community of insiders. In the mid nineties, a new generation appeared on the scene; today, it is an active component that, to a certain extent, shapes the scene. Their first works were made in a specific social situation, when the post-revolutionary euphoria was succeeded by disappointment and a ‘bad mood’. In English, this is described as ‘Expectations – Reality Gap’. The ascendant generation of insiders began to exhibit within the existing system of galleries, which consisted of small, peripheral galleries and alternative spaces that sometimes housed exhibitions for a very short period. Although many of them are today well-known artists, only a small circle of people is familiar with their early works. The main aim of this exhibition is to show them, mostly for the first time, in an established gallery space.
A catalogue in Czech and English language accompanies the exhibition.