CT / MeetFactory Gallery / Who Is Playing?
MeetFactory Gallery
Curator: Jaro Varga
Opening: 10. 12. 2015, 7.30pm
Exhibition duration:10. 12. 2015 - 7. 2. 2016
Artists: Olaf
Breuning (SWE), Zuzanna Janin (PL), Pawel Kruk (USA), Annika Larsson (SWE), Jean-Ulrick Désert (Haiti), Shaun Leonardo
(USA), Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucia Tkáčová (SK), Assa Kauppi (SWE)
In a well-known conversation with Laurence Olivier taken during the
shooting of the Marathon Man (1976), Dustin Hoffman explains the dividing line
between acting and living, between reality and simulation. He says he did not
sleep for several days to be able to realistically render the character of
Thomas Levy. Thus he could better identify
with the role of a man at the end of his both mental and physical strength.
Olivier asks him: “Why don’t you just try acting?”
Sporting events are often likened to
theatre and sportsmen to actors on stage. Sport, similar to theatre, is a small-size
performance of different social patterns. It
happens on the level of an artificial simulation of social schemes, where,
orchestrated by strict rules, by victory and loss, its consequence is not real
injustice as it happens in real life, but it rather works on a symbolic level.
Roland Barthes relates Ancient Theater to wrestling by means of “emphasis”
(emotional excitement), which is the constituent component of both. He refers
to wrestling not as a sport but as a performance: “To watch a depiction of pain in wrestling is no more ignoble than to
follow the suffering of Arnolf or Andromache”. Emotions are to be found on
top of this performance. After a failure athletes show emotions of
self-destruction, aggression and pain in front of the viewers. For instance in
wrestling the fighter exaggerates, saturating the eye of the spectator with an
almost unbearable view of defeat. The gesture of a defeated fighter does not conceal
the failure; quite on the contrary, it is being highlighted and solemnly
observed as a rest in music. In wrestling the actors are not ashamed to show
pain, they can cry and even enjoy their grief.
How real is what we follow during
sporting events? And can it be “acted” at all?
To what extent are emotions eliminated by the performative meta-reality of the sports
arena? Joy,
pain, aggression, disappointment and other emotional expressions do not remain
only within sportsman’s subjective experience; their experiencing is publicly
performed and thus affecting the experience of the whole arena and all its
components – sportsmen, visitors, sports coaches and managers, media, TV and
radio audiences, artists. Emotions at some point can become an effective political instrument.
The artists exhibiting at "Who Is Playing?" try to tune
in to the roles of sportsmen and the sports world. They investigate hidden
effects of emotions, the formal and performative aspect of experiencing defeat,
or the manipulative handling
of tense situations with the aim to stir up “emphasis” in the viewers. They apprehend sporting emotions as an important motive with the
potential to culminate in an individual or collective protest.
Zuzanna Janin
in her video performance called "Fight"
presents an emotionally charged boxing match with a professional boxer
Przemyslaw Saleta. The match was preceded by several months of preparatory
coaching undertaken by the artist. Janin uses boxing as a metaphor of life,
which is a constant duel and play of emotions in human relationships.
Pawel Kruk in
his work “Manipulator” assumes the
identity of Michael Jordan, imitating his gestures, mimics and sporting
movements, to further develop the legend’s myth by means of identifying himself
with this famous sportsperson. Kruk is interested in the established patterns
of how sports idols are being construed and how their world works.
Olaf Breuning
in his work “Doble” presents two
tennis players in two copies, with facial masks made of big tennis balls.
Breuning reveals, by means of an ironic shortcut, the relationship between the
media image and the private, hidden face of the sports people.
Assa Kauppi in
her work "The Race is Over"
drops a subtle probe into the emotional experiencing of young girl swimmers just
before the beginning of a swimming contest. Kauppi takes interest in the
principles of competition, victory or loss. The young sporting girls display
delicacy, openness and immunity to emotional manipulation.
Annika Larsson
in her video “Hockey” presents an
obscure match between two anonymous hockey teams in the absence of spectators. The
artist’s main focus is the ritual essence of the game, accompanied by a variety
of visual representations, logos, brands and symbols. Annika Larsson presents
an analysis and inconspicuous manipulation of details of a sporting match.
Jean-Ulrick Désert in his work “Passion” displays
a series of photographic portraits of football fans dressed in traditional fan
costumes. However the author has produced colorless copies of the original
costumes, deprived of all color decorations representing mainly national colors
of the teams. Désert unveils the stereotypes of sports culture and the
mainstream identification of fans with the patriotic pathos of a sports show.
The focal point of Shaun Leonard’s work is a thesis that
sports, like theater, can be performed according to a premeditated scenario. The
author deals with different principles of experiencing loss that are encoded
and repeatedly lived in the conduct of both sportspersons and their audiences. The
“Orchestra of Failure” reflects upon
the issue of social pressure in achieving individual victories.
The huge inflatable fist by Anetta Mona Chişa & Lucie Tkáčová, a
work called “Either Way, We Lose”, resembles
a mass amusement article symbolizing failed revolutions, whose residues invaded
the entertainment industry. The fist is a kind of juxtaposition to a sports
match where the amusing edge has prevailed over the collective or individual
protest of its actors.
The exhibition is being organized in cooperation with MeetFactory and Czech Olympic Committee.
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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 249sarka.marouskova@meetfactory.cz
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MeetFactory is supported in 2015 by a grant from the
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