INDICATIONS

exhibition of current
conceptual artists

Artists: Tomáš Svoboda, Tomáš Vaněk, Dominik Lang, Zbyněk Baladrán, Milena Dopitová, Ládví (Jiří Týn, Adéla Svobodová, Jan Haubelt, Tomáš Severa), Jesper Alvaer, Jan Kotík, Barbora Klímová, Richard Wiesner, Petra Pětiletá, Eva Koťátková, Vasil Artamonov, Marek Meduna, Václav Magid, Jitka Mikulicová, Petra Herotová, Alexej Klyuykov, Sláva Sobotovičová, Silvina Arismendi, Daniela Baráčková, Jiří David, Jitka Mikulcová, Milan Salák and others.

Contemporary artists presented at the Indication exhibit share interest in high-profile social issues, relationships and specific (space) situations, their works very often reflecting personally and thoroughly defined issues and their contexts. We are confronted with artists who do not strive to manifest simple political or esthetic opinions, nor a strict civic attitude, they wish to experiment, to bore a sound, to examine the issue in detail, to arrive at a diagnosis, to make personal experience with it and to test all feasible communication opportunities, optionally even proposing recommendations to set things right. All of the above is completely natural in contemporary art – today’s art does not want to be separated from reality. Artists draw attention to isolation of certain social groups, they test opportunities of mutual communication, at times they infiltrate – in somewhat of a subversive action – into media space, they test stereotypes and propose solutions.

The term Indication in medicine refers to circumstances symptomatic of an illness and the manner they can be cured – i.e. measures and actions aiming towards a certain type of improvement. Nonetheless, the name of the exhibit would be better understood in its original broad meaning: notification, sign, reference to a specific symptom. Messages of individual artists exhibited in a former clinic spring out of the need to tackle the chosen phenomenon is a more complex fashion or better yet to increase the capacity to monitor a specific environment, social group or selected individual in great detail. Artists display seemingly primitive or banal things, the state of things, they indicate the problem that they find worthy of their attention, recognizing it to be a pressing issue.

How can one come to grips with the omnipresent media picture manipulation and with the mechanism inside the society? One of the solutions offered by conceptual art is to reject the overall strategy and to restrain oneself to an effective forms. Exhibited works articulate the authors’ authentic emotional attitude towards these elements of reality through a camcorder, installation, use of day-to-day stuff and so forth. The more the outcomes accept common reality for a fact the more they lack visual aggressiveness in their modesty, the more they speak to the point with increasing sensitivity. You have to search for them. Solutions offered are different: from passive reflection, more active commentary to personal engagement into the specific issue or into communication sometimes going so far as to become mystification. Contemporary artists teach as to remain vigil. Reception, context, process. It does matter what we look at, what we occupy our minds with, what we do and why.

Mariana Serranová

Note:
We apologize to both artists and visitors for possible changes to the list of exhibitors. The exhibit will be documented prior to the opening of the festival in a comprehensive manner for the accompanying catalogue.