Almost the last part of the exhibition Signal III is abstractly titled "Inhabitable Bodies". If you don't know what to imagine by this title, in the following lines I will try to outline its origin.
On the transport cart with the text by curator David Voda we find a reference to the words of Petr Kabeš: "In Czechoslovakia, as is well known, all the hope of the 1960s was run over by tanks ... and the artists moved into habitable bodies". So we already know that "habitable bodies" was the space where the artists of tomorrow, i.e. postmodernism, fled to create. In their works we see the return of ornament, joy, beauty and playfulness. This can also be seen in the work of the Fluxus art group, founded in 1960. This group drew on the work of Marcel Duchamp and the works of Dadaism. One of the key personalities thanks to whom the principles of this artistic movement came to us was, for example, Milan Knížák, who was himself a member of it. The desire for experimentation resulted in a break from purely artistic expression and led the artist to a new communication with the viewer. Through a fusion of media and intermediality, the artists distanced themselves from the classical perception of the image and the gallery space. The purposeful countering of the differences between high and low culture defined many underground artists.
The exhibition's architect, Mark Ther, also worked with the gallery space in a relatively unconventional way. He divided the room into two intimate sections, crossed by a narrow corridor. He further develops the sense of intimacy and playfulness by using a light carpet for the floor. All this contrasts with the piercing colours in the paintings by Tomáš Císařovský, Vladimír Skrepl and Stanislav Diviš.
In the room entitled "Inhabitable Bodies", you can also see works by Jiří Kovanda, Zdeněk Kučera, Petr Kvíčala, Martin Mainer, Michael Rittstein, Milan Kunc, Petr Nikl, Jaroslav Róna and Vladimír Kokolia.
Barbara Kurzoková / Telegraph Gallery
Photo: Matěj Doležel
