PR / MeetFactory Gallery / CIRCULAR RUINS

MEETFACTORY Gallery ANDTHE FRENCH INSTITUTE IN PRAGUE
Present the Exhibition Project
CIRCULAR RUINS 

Exhibiting artists: Lara Almarcegui (ES), Daniela Baráčková (CZ), The Bells Angels: Simon Bernheim & Julien Sirjacq (FR), Louidgi Beltrame (FR), Émilie Benoist (FR), Nathalie Brevet_Hughes Rochette (FR), Wojtek Doroszuk (PL), Barbora Klímová (CZ), Djamel Kokene (FR), Svätopluk Mikyta (SK), Jarmila Mitríková & Dávid Demjanovič (SK), Michal Moravčik (SK), Nicolas Moulin (FR), Florian Neufeldt (DE), Marketa Othová (CZ), Jan Pfeiffer (CZ), Jiří Poláček (CZ), Florian Pugnaire & David Raffini (FR), Nikolai von Rosen (DE), Věra Samková (CZ), Christophe Sarlin (FR), Pavla Sceranková (CZ/SK), Dušan Šimánek (CZ), Valentin Souquet (FR), Eric Stephany (FR), Fritz Stolberg (DE), Ivan Svoboda (CZ), Adam Vačkář (CZ), Jaro Varga (SK), Sergio Verastegui (PE)

Curator: Jean-Marc Avrilla Exhibition

opening: 3. 4. at 5pm Galerie 35, 7pm at MeetFactory
exhibition duration: 3.4. – 18.5. MeetFactory / 3.4. – 24.5. Galerie 35  

A dream woke up in the dreamer’s dream… J. L. Borges

Jean-Marc Avrilla, French curator and art critic, prepared a large exhibition project for the MeetFactory and Gallery 35 on the premises of the French Institute Prague. It is a follow-up to his residential stay at MeetFactory in 2012. The exhibition is mapping the topic of ruins in contemporary art across a variety of generational approaches and artistic means, in the work of more than thirty international artists.

Capturing images of ruins has had a long tradition in Western art. In the last decade though, their portrayal has acquired a different semblance – not so much the meaning, rather the visual formability of this subject has undergone many changes over the course of history. From the hymns on Ancient civilizations during the Renaissance, the critical approach of reason in the period of Enlightenment in the 18th century, the melancholy of Romanticism to the symbols of political upheaval of the 20th century, the ruins represent global clashes as well as humans in the snares of their destinies. The exhibition “Circular Ruins” borrows its name from a story by Jorge Luis Borges. It evokes a landscape full of contradictions where the darkness of some works exhibited stands in sharp contrast to the lighter colors of others. The ruins’ legacy becomes a kind of ghostly phantom opening up a new view of the modern world.

The project consists of two independent and yet communicating units. In Gallery 35, a choice of photographs and videos by Czech and Slovak artists will be presented, from the 1980s to the present. These works make use of the phenomena of appearances, their changes in time and their transience. It’s not about melancholy, but rather the poetry of simple and immediate things, that paradoxically illustrate the depths of history. The other part of the exhibition is taking place at the MeetFactory Gallery and will introduce works of European or Europe-based artists. The selected works or site-specific installations analyze the subject of ruins or debris from their authors’ viewpoint, being considered within the context of the contemporary globalized world. The exhibition intends to provoke thinking about the ways of depiction, the complexity of contemporary views of references to the past and oblivion, and about the different possible approaches to European history. At the same time, the exhibition suggests the necessity of reconsidering the multiple layers of the modern world, its history and the way we see it, which has been, especially in the last few decades, ever more apparently formed by the artistic, historiographical and anthropological interpretation done by the non-European nations.

Presented with the kind support of the French Institute, the French Institute in Prague and the Goethe Institute.


Circular_Ruins_ENG_pressrelease (1).docx