CT / MeetFactory Gallery / Dan Perjovschi (RO), Matěj Smetana (CZ): 15 000 Years of Sameness

MeetFactory Gallery
Curators: Karina Kottová, Jaro Varga
Opening: 21. 10. 2015, 19:30
Exhibition duration:  21. 10. – 29. 11. 2015  

The question is, do we live in a civilization, or rather in a jungle? Hot water runs from the tap, yet reality is so complicated that it is impossible to view the whole from any specific place. Whoever climbs the tallest tree can see the network of roads and layers underneath, but is now too high to grasp them. This groping for the essence or “real information” is often not made easier for him even by the “smart devices”, having at least one of them stuck in his knapsack and another in his hand. Everything can be looked up, yet almost everything is misleading. Sometimes a person climbing the tree in the middle of civilization does not know what to look for. And a report ran on the TV that night about an unknown man somewhere in the south of China who stole two jackets. The media kept silent about the aftermath of this cruel deed. We may notice that rainforests in exotic destinations are diminishing while the ‘old continent’ is ever more dense. Beasts of prey defend their territories and creatures appearing quite peaceful at first glance are usually the most treacherous ones. We discuss the necessity of preserving the sensitive ecosystem over and over again, but excuse me, the virgin forest has absorbed all sorts of things during thousands of years, and it is still around!  

The exhibition of Dan Perjovschi and Matěj Smetana is an imaginary civilization jungle, where the space “within” and space “without” define and at the same time permeate each other; where political comment is not far from a cave painting, where permeability alternates with clearly demarcated borders, to open yet another window into new possibilities. The mood is both engaged and poetic, both hopeful and skeptical. Humor is the refuge, but not an end in itself. It is not necessary to understand everything, yet, like in any jungle, it is good to try and find at least some basic points of direction. Or, give it up and rely on one’s intuition, on the fact that underneath all these layers we still are human beings to whom such characteristics are attributed as feeling, empathy, or even solidarity.   

At first glance the artwork of Dan Perjovschi reminds one of a huge school blackboard filled with drawings, or a cyclone of signs carved into school benches, where often a mix of overlapping variety of mathematic formulas, history cribs, messages to classmates or vulgar symbols permeates. With Perjovschi they form a universal maze of symbolic representations – jungle of text and drawings – completely covering the gallery walls and openly offering the viewer infinite possibilities of how the world and politics might be arranged. The artist “wanders from place to place”, always making anew the mosaic of the world in its current state. He wants to overtake time, be faster than the mass media, to bring news about the world in the most concentrated form. His work responds to the geopolitical context of where it is being created, e.g. to the Greek or immigration crisis, war in the Ukraine and Syria. Successively the work is being recycled during the next implementation and in other geopolitics. Thus Perjovschi succeeds to highlight problems that are often felt as remote or secondary in the given context. All abides in an atmosphere of subtle irony, poetry, fullness or overflow.  

While Perjovschi’s filling of the gallery walls is the result of a number of spontaneous decisions on how to newly arrange his years-long archive of drawings, the concept of Matěj Smetana presents a comprehensive series of recently created videos, objects and photographs. However what both artists have in common is the way of symbolic depiction and free connection of seemingly unrelated images, as well as creation of new, “untrodden”, cognitive corners. Matěj Smetana penetrates the “jungle” with several strong motives, such as the flying serpent, a flapping flag-dog, or a ‘growing with hair’ cup. These archetypal images come from Smetana’s interest in the world of phantasy, accompanied by escape from rational systems (rationality used to be the focal point of other works by the artist). Smetana attempts an “assembled” nature and a digital grasping of specific biological rhythms and biological regularity. He lets himself be inspired by the “Uncanny Valley”, a theory developed by Japanese robotics expert Masahiro Mori. It determines the dependency of human emotions polarity when watching robots on the level of their affinity with man. Viewing a flying serpent could be accompanied by a similar emotional response as observing a perfect robot, hard to tell from a living man. Smetana’s choreography of associative images and objects represents a unique system of symbols enhanced in confrontation with the works of Dan Perjovschi, and by the conceptually well-devised exhibition architecture.    

The exhibition was created in cooperation with the KomiksFEST! and Centrul Ceh. The cooperation on the Matěj Smetana’s work “Divadlo 1”: Dominika Koššová, Erik Janeček, Matúš Gavorník, Fruzsina Eskulits, Emilia Vereshchagina.    

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Contact and more information: 

Jaro Varga – kurátor
+420 775 655 295 
jaro.varga@meetfactory.cz  

Šárka Maroušková → PR Manager 
+420 723 706 249
sarka.marouskova@meetfactory.cz                    

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MeetFactory is supported in 2015 by a grant from the City of Prague amounting to 6.500.000 CZK.