Date: 05.10.2011 — 30.10.2011
Beginning: 19:00
Jan Pfeiffer’s hand-drawn animated videos resemble science fiction movies as if they were accelerated and condensed into an instant. Their unusual spatial and temporal perspective enables viewers to see the human community from a total, “god-like” view. Structures disintegrate and rise again; a strict geometry emerges out of emptiness and is transformed into organic forms; a well-functioning order collapses. It remains uncertain, however, whether this or that configuration stands for a utopia or dystopia.
The radically located point of view, which focuses on the difficult-to-grasp totality, is characteristic of both art and philosophy looking beyond of what we deem as possible. It is productive in terms of criticizing the traditional forms of human co-existence as well as thinking about new ways of social organization. It hides possibilities invisible to those who remain immersed within the everydayness of norms and conventions. Through such a perspective, at the same time, one experiences human development as a chain that is at once unpredictable and irreversibly repetitive, of which the individual is merely one infinitely small element.
The main theme of the exhibition is the whole: collective imagery on the one hand and collective being and acting on the other, as well as the complicated relationship between the two. In a video featuring furniture from houses of parliament of various countries, however, the focus is on representative and representing individuals who form the whole in a decisive way. Yet what is at stake is also what unconsciously influences or predetermines their choices. The conflict lies once again between the infinite number of possibilities and the culturally embedded order, which limits the freedom of choice and is here materialized in the different shapes of chairs and tables: ascetic, luxurious, comfortable, simple, spacious, cramped.
Tereza Stejskalová
The exhibition is supported by:
Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic
Center for Contemporary Art
