Dominikánská 9, Brno, http://www.dum-umeni.cz/
Dům Umění (The Brno House of Arts) is a large contemporary art institution that organizes temporary shows in Brno. It is spread across two locations – the actual House of the Arts and another location in the historical center of Brno (Dum Panu z Kunstatu). “Vzpomínky na budoucnost II ” (Memories of the Future II) was a group show in the second location mentioned. As can be guessed from the title, the show focused on artists investigating ‘past’ utopic ideas, particularly in an East Europe context. The first room featured a large scale installation by Vasil Artamonov and Alexey Klyuykov: A wooden panel construction with a number of smaller artworks fixed onto it – some of the artworks were original creations of Artamonov and Klyuykov, while other artworks have been borrowed from the Dům Umění collection – all referencing the historical period of post WW-2 communism in Eastern Europe. Room 2 had a video projection of a documentary movie by Janek Simon how a group of Polish artists went to India to do art in a utopic community set up in the 60’s (“Mission Auropol”). The video was closely linked to the last room of the show (room 5) which featured one of the outcomes of the group’s travel to India – Agnieszka Polska’s film “Hair”, which was about a couple of hippies travelling to India to find something they lacked in Poland (situated in the 1970’s). This two works within the same show created a strange deja-vu feeling (parts of Agnieszka Polska’s film were featured in Janek Simon’s documentary). Sandwiched between the two projections were two rooms with three artist’s works –prints and paintings based on old print material from 60/70/80s in Slovakia, Zbyněk Baladrán’s two-channel video-installation about memory, forgetting and framing of facts and Václav Magid’s large wallpaper referencing the link between rock music and political change in Russia. I found Václav Magid’s installation as most problematic – simply pasting some photocopies on the wall did not do the job in this case. The explanation of the work definitely overtook the work itself: The explanation was interesting, the visual artefact not. Zbyněk Baladrán’s videoinstallation (Preliminary Report / Case Study) was of his typical kind, so it was not that surprising for me, but it was professional and communicating well with the visitor: After watching for a minute or two one was drawn in, understood, and then it was up to him to continue watching (or not). Zbyněk Baladrán also showed the table showing past/present/future relationships which has been premiered at the Monument to Transformation exhibition in 2007 at tranyitdisplay). Svatopluk Mikyta’s graphics on the other hand captured attention not through the story/meaning but through their materiality: The layers of newsprint, color, and plastic foil, in specific colors, communicated a coherent aesthetic. The underlying layer of reference to a historical period stayed visible and legible. The only question to be asked was to which extent Svatopluk Mikyta’s works were simply making use of the viewer’s own memories of the given historical period. But maybe the answer to this question does not really matter in the end.
Overall, I found that “Past Future II” was a well prepared and minutely set-up show. There was a coherent narrative and the curator (Jan Zalesak) clearly put his intentions in front of the audience. The clarity of ideas was also confirmed in the exhibition catalogue (or rather call it adjacent book – it did not really feature any images from the show) – one long essay by Jan Zalesak – providing a detailed narrative to the exhibition. Walking through the show was an enjoyable experience. On the downside, I found space for improvement in the selection of artworks. I enjoyed the narrow selection, which allowed each artwork to breathe and stand on its own, but given this narrow selection I found the choice of two directly linked video works problematic. I would prefer to see too different artistic positions, and not just two reiterations of the same. In the context of the exhibition, I can imagine that the curator also pondered over this question – and decided to prefer to provide more context than two completely separate works – which is an understandable decision. Given the aspirations mentioned in the exhibition text – the coverage of Eastern Europe – I would also wish for a more equal, less Czech-Slovak centric distribution. Including a position from Hungary/Bulgaria/Romania (and there’s not just Anri Sala) would help to round up the impression.