Telegraph Gallery presents the collection of Robert Runták, founder of the Telegraph art and creativity platform, to the public for the fourth time. A representative selection, Signal IV: The Eighties is a testament to the unofficial current of the 1980s. It juxtaposes the generation of emerging artists of the time with their mentors. Signal IV, featuring works by Milan Knížák, Adriena Šimotová, Jiří David, Tomáš Císařovský, Michael Rittstein and others, opened on 5 December and will remain on view until 20 March next year.
Signal IV is the fourth consecutive exhibition to reveal another part of Robert Runták's collection. This time it focuses on a selection of works from the 1980s in Czechoslovakia, specifically from 1979-1991. Robert Runták has been conceptually building a collection representing the unofficial art scene of that time for more than a decade. All of the exhibited works entered the collection at least two decades after their creation. "From today's perspective, it seems unique that this exhibition, composed of exhibits from a single private collection, offers not only the subjective view of the collector, but can also function as a more comprehensive insight into the Czech art scene of the 1980s," notes curator Pavla Kosař, who prepared the exhibition together with Miroslav Jiřel. "It may seem that the 1980s were very invisible on the surface, with very little happening in the official field of vision. But there was so much more going on under the surface, in private events or in the environment of handcrafted lifestyles. From my perspective, the 1980s are "un/visible" because of these two diverging and alternating perspectives."
The most interesting of the contemporary art scene, then, took place outside the official oversight of the evaluation committees that were supposed to guarantee adherence to ideological and artistic value. The multilayered unofficial gallery operations were kept on the periphery: in private, alternative spaces or in the open air. The young generation of artists was formed, among other things, through short-term exhibitions in public spaces such as Chmelnice or Konfrontace I-IV, often accompanied by police persecution. The exhibition presents the generation of artists of the 1980s in confrontation with their mentors who worked outside official institutions. Behind closed studio doors, they made up for the lack of debate in art schools. "An unmistakable decade-long visual experience was created. A time in which languages, approaches, concepts and personalities collided, carrying an idea and visual culture from a relatively distant past into this aforementioned time," pointed out Jan Kudrna, curator of the Robert Runták collection.
The exhibition Signal IV: The Eighties presents artists active in the 1980s along two main - generational - lines. The generation of imaginary mentors who worked in the previous decades is represented in the Robert Runták Collection, and therefore in the exhibition, by names such as Milan Knížák, Adriena Šimotová, Aleš Veselý, Alena Kučerová and Jiří Načeradský. The then-emerging artistic generation will be introduced to works associated with the Hardheads group, which included Jiří David and Jaroslav Róna, as well as other related artists and solitaires, such as Václav Stratil, Vladimír Kokolia, Jiří Kovanda, Tomáš Císařovský and Marian Palla.
The works of a total of 38 artists are on display at the Telegraph Gallery until 20. A catalogue for the exhibition has also been published and is available for purchase on the eshop or directly from the Telegraph.
