PR / MeetFactory Gallery / Plato's Third Eye

MEETFACTORY Gallery

Presents the exhibition PLATO’S THIRD EYE

Exhibiting artists: Matyáš Chochola (CZ), Alexandr Puškin (CZ), Annika Rixen (DE), Kirstine Roepstorff (DK), Pavel Sterec (CZ), Roman Štětina (CZ), Iris Touliatou (GR), Jaro Varga (SK), Sinta Werner (DE)

Curator: Karina Pfeiffer Kottová
Exhibition opening: 11. 9. at 7pm
Exhibition duration: 11. 9. – 26. 10. 2014

This group show presenting works by nine international contemporary artists, currently based in Prague and Berlin, is built around the topic of light and shadow seen as an allegory for the notion of reality and vision. Within the framework of Plato's notorious cave, everything we perceive in our daily lives can be seen as mere shadows, while the true "reality" only reveals itself to those capable of thinking beyond tangible objects and measurable phenomena. The interpretation that serves as a possible key to the present exhibition comes from Harvard specialists in cognitive and neurological systems on one hand, and the author of an esoteric bestseller on the other: the cave can be the human skull, within which the construction of the surrounding world is taking place. While a scientist quite naturally maintains that we cannot escape from this cave and that the real world around us can be apprehended only through the shadows in our head, the esoteric mind sees the way out of this cave in the so called “third eye”, which is considered, mainly by the Eastern tradition, to be the mystical gate to extra-sensual perception. The recipes of how to open the third eye have lately flooded popular websites of global reach, offering a medley of instant spirituality, online tarot, mind reading, and the like.
 
The exhibition presents several new projects by the invited artists, including large-scale installations and sculptures. Greek artist Iris Touliatou and German artist Sinta Werner accepted the invitation from MeetFactory to participate in a studio program, and therefore created site-specific works reacting upon the particular gallery space. Roman Štětina, this year’s finalist of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award, shows a monumental work created during his year-long exchange at one of the major European art schools, Staedelschule in Frankfurt. The Danish artist Kirstine Roepstorff will present a kinetic light installation, which was shown in the Copenhagen-based Nikolaj Kunsthal, at the occasion of an exhibition devoted to the legacy of the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.

The exhibition at MeetFactory is a constellation of works by nine artists who freely and yet consistently reinterpret both the existent reality around them and their personal and collective past and phenomena that, in relation to the above, may seem quite supernatural or at least hard to explain. It deals with light and shadow as metaphors for the tension between the material and the immaterial, perceiving it from both adoring and critical or ironic perspectives. The exhibition draws on a project called Metaphysics of Discipline, which was presented in the Czech Center in Berlin during the summer of 2013.

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Open daily 1- 8pm
Voluntary Admission

Contacts and more information:
Christina Gigliotti - PR & Marketing
christina@meetfactory.cz + 420 776 798 202

Karina Pfeiffer Kottová – Curator of MeetFactory Galleries
karina@meetfactory.cz + 420 732 464 434

MeetFactory is supported by a grant from the City of Prague amounting to 6.500.000 CZK for the year 2014.

The exhibition is presented with the kind support of the Danish Arts Council.