No Art Today? New Acquisitions from the Collections of Prague City Gallery 6. 10. 2021 – 30. 1. 2022
Curators: Sandra Baborovská, Jitka Hlaváčková, Magdalena Juříková, Jakub Král and Olga Malá
The No Art Today? – New Acquisitions from the Collections of Prague City Gallery exhibition presents a representative selection of artworks purchased for the Prague City Gallery’s collections between 2017 and 2020. Thanks to the regular budget allocated by its founder, the City of Prague, for the expansion of its art collections, the GHMP, as one of the few public galleries, has been able to systematically add to and expand the collections in its care for seven years now. On the basis of a careful study of the Prague art scene in particular, as well as with regard to its recent exhibition projects, the Gallery has managed to enrich its collections with contemporary works as well as to fill in the “blank spaces” in art, especially from the second half of the 20th century.
Second part of the exhibition will continue from 16 November 2021 at the House of Photography.
Between 2017 and 2020, Prague City Gallery acquired, through purchase or donation, nearly 700 works from the following artists for its collections: Jan Konůpek, Dominik Lang, Jaroslav Róna, Josef Žáček, Július Koller, Alena Kotzmannová, Radek Brousil, Iren Stehli, Karel Miler, Stano Filko, Jan Šerých, Adéla Babanová, Jiří Žák, Anna Daučíková, Woody Vasulka, Jiří Thýn, Valentýna Janů, Marie Kratochvílová, Martin Kohout, Aleksandra Vajd & Hynek Alt, Jiří Kovanda, Johana Pošová, Ján Mančuška, Marie Tučková, Jan Merta, Josef Bolf, Peter Bartoš, Zbyněk Baladrán, Jiří Franta and David Böhm, Jan Kotík, Anna Hulačová, Roman Štětina, Daniel Pitín, Marie Blabolilová, Tomáš Svoboda, Ivan Pinkava, Vendula Chalánková, Tomáš Císařovský, Martin Mainer, Lubomír Typlt, Sráč Sam, Petr Štembera, Vladimír Havlík, Jan Mlčoch, Tomas Ruller, Milan Knížák, Vladimír Ambroz, Markéta Hlinovská, Zdena Kolečková, Jitka Svobodová, Markéta Othová, Peter Rónai, Rudolf Sikora, Viktor Frešo, František Kyncl, Michaela Maupicová, Magdalena Jetelová, Dalibor Chatrný, Margita Titlová-Ylovsky, Jiří Příhoda, John Cage, Jana Želibská, Alex Mlynárčik, Zorka Ságlová, Barbora Klímová, Particie Fexová, Jiří Kačer, Květa Pacovská, Lenka Klodová, Milena Dopitová, Kateřina Vincourová, Jakub Hošek, Pavel Příkaský, Pavla Malinová, Jiří Petrbok, KW (Igor Korpaczewski), Matěj Smetana, Martin Velíšek, Šimon Brejcha, Lenka Vilhelmová, Richard Janeček, Václav Magid, Ondřej Přibyl, Michal Kindernay, Jitka Válová, Jiří Černický, APART, Barbora Dayef, Matěj Al-Ali, Tomáš Smetana, Milan Kozelka, Lenka Vítková, Matouš Lipus, Miroslava Večeřová, Anežka Hošková.
The works on display at the Municipal Library represent a wide range of artistic tendencies from the 1960s to the present day. They were created using all currently used media, so there are paintings, sculptures, videos, installations, drawings, graphics… and combinations thereof by the artists. The exhibition itself is structured into several thematic units.
The exhibition halls on the left accentuate the themes of abstract shape and text variations (works by František Kyncl, Jan Hampl, Milan Kozelka, Jan Šerých, Milena Dopitová, Jitka Svobodová, Lenka Vítková and others). The section is dominated by monumental sculptural creations by Jiří Příhoda and Magdalena Jetelová. Great attention is paid to contemporary audiovisual art, in which the artists have developed both social and purely visual themes. The artists include Jiří Černický, Ján Mančuška, Mark Ther, Adéla Babanová, Martin Kohout and Roman Štětina. Also represented are some of the works that were realised and presented within the GHMP’s Start Up exhibition programme for young artists – for example, videos by Jiří Žák, Richard Janeček, and the APART group, and installations by Marie Tučková. A special place in the selection of works from the field of new media is occupied by the extensive, internationally acclaimed video series by Anna Daučíková.
The other part of the exhibition is, due to its figurative representation, generally more socially oriented, especially regarding the issues of society, physicality and gender. Works by Tomáš Císařovský, Patricia Fexová and Tomáš Smetana illustrate what is going on in society, especially on the Prague art scene. Igor Korpaczewski, Jiří Petrbok, Josef Bolf, Pavla Malinová, Margita Titlová-Ylovsky, Jan Merta and Josef Žáček, and sculptors Dominik Lang and Anna Hulačová, for example, express their views on the position of the individual in the context of their time in the form of large-scale paintings or sculptural installations. An experimental tendency, which turns, among other things, to the roots of the moving image, is represented by the works of Tomáš Svoboda, Daniel Pitín and Lubomír Typlt.
