Curatorial Text / Kostka Gallery /VOJTĚCH MAŠA (CZ): NOBEL PRIZE

KOSTKA GALLERY  

presents the exhibition    

VOJTĚCH MAŠA(CZ): NOBEL PRIZE                   

curators: Eva Mráziková, Anna Vartecká    

opening: 3. 4., 19.00
exhibition duration: 3. 4. – 27. 4. 2014
artist bio: Adam Vrbka

Vojtěch Maša’s project at the Kostka Gallery is an exhibition from the winning prize of the EXIT 2013 award. This award is announced by the Faculty of Art and Design, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem for Czech and more recently also Slovak art university students. The Prize generally supports student competition, dynamism and natural activity. Finalists must utilize a specific professional gallery space, as well as communicate and work with one another. Thus, the setting for the competition and exhibition emphasizes the dialogue, variety and confrontation. These parameters create a lively and diverse platform providing information about current tendencies, immediate pedagogical influence, and the priorities of the Czech and Slovak universities and art schools.

For the 6th year of this running contest there were 56 submitted projects – of which nine projects were chosen by nine expert committee members to form an exhibition in the Emil Filla Gallery in Ústí nad Labem. During the second round of judging, the committee selected the winning project by Vojtěch Maša, who currently presents it in Kostka Gallery.  

The project Nobel Prize plays with the principle and form of awards not only in the field of fine arts. As a mathematical biologist by training, Maša always aspired to win the highest award in this field – The Nobel Prize. He actually managed to receive it through his winning project for the EXIT 2013 Award, although in a slightly shifted form. The key of this concept is transferring the stipend for the EXIT winner (30,000 CZK) into realizing a scaled-down golden medal, which is being awarded to Nobel Prize winners. In Maša’s exhibition, this version of Nobel Prize is accompanied by a magnifying glass, which increases the artifact to its original size, at which the value of the scholarship is not enough to compensate for. 

The subtle irony, and direct sincerity in the position as the author is typical in Maša’s creations. His passion and playfulness is not only related to the visual and conceptual aspect, but also the ability to reflect and comment on art and its operation as such. It is indeed these qualities, which were commended for the commission for the EXIT Prize 2013 and taken as beneficial for contemporary art.  

Commissioners of the EXIT Prize and curators of the exhibition - Eva Mráziková, Anna Vartecká

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Vojtěch Maša (*1982, CZ) is a student of the Intermedia Studio of Václav Stratil at FaVU, Brno and a winner of the 2013 EXIT Award. In 2010 he was also a finalist of the NG 333 Award. He investigates social themes as well as the value of artistic work. In Tokyo Metro Project the artist created a compulsory survey measuring the number of happy and unhappy people. He is also an author of a fictive firm named Delegated Concepts, which retails artistic ideas or complete realization of artworks with no claim for intellectual property. In a project titled Bill of Exchange from My Ex-Girlfriend he carved the bill into granite, creating an artwork that, at the same time, respected all the legal terms for a bill. However, the value of the artwork could exceed the value of the borrowed amount.

In his work, Maša combines the point of view of a visual artist and that of someone influenced by his previous studies – Mathematical Biology at SCI MUNI and Graphic Design and IT at FI MUNI. Besides the scientific preciseness through which the artist approaches his projects, he has also revealed this position in a project titled Nobel Prize, created for the Kostka Gallery as a final show for the 2013 EXIT Award.

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Contacts and Information  

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

Christina Gigliotti – PR & Marketing
christina@meetfactory.cz
+420 776 798 202  

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