A Coma-Like state

10 September - 21 December 2009

Participating Artists:
Michal Černušák(SK), David Pešat(CZ), Pavel Šmid(CZ), Štěpan Tešař(CZ), Martin Sedlák(SK), Jiři Petrbok(CZ), Jan Kadlec(CZ), Jakub Špaňhel(CZ), Jan Slovenčik(CZ), Dalibor David(CZ), Jonaš Czesany(CZ), Jiři David(CZ), Jan Gemrot(CZ), Viktor Frešo(SK), Vernika Bromová(CZ).
Curated by Olga Dvorak

dvorak sec contemporary is pleased to present A Coma-Like State, a group exhibition curated by Olga Dvorak especially for the Gallery Art Factory exhibition space. The artworks, from a selection of very young Czech artists, reflect the idea of a society that has stoped believing in progress and has been captured in a coma-like state of ghostly inertia (Jiri Petrbok, Jan Slovenčík). The artists experiment with the alienation of everyday objects, in order to speak of their ambivalent relationship to home and family (Jan Kadlec, Veronika Bromova). The exhibition explores innovative practices of art-making, providing an overview of the diverse ways in which contemporary artists reinvent traditional techniques.

About a selection of the artists on view:

Dalibor David /CZ/
A common bathroom is turned into a meditative interior by Dalibor David. The painting In the Bath is a window into a purgative sanctuary, where the body is cleansed of impurities. Accelerated consciousness, processing information and phenomena all day long relaxes here and become dull, the bodily vessel of the individual reposes in soothing peace and tranquility. The similarities between the shape of the bath and a coffin are well taken.

Jonáš Czesaný /CZ/
Jonáš Czesaný creates a personal melancholy world of his own experiences and recollections, which are anchored in the coordinates of a time line and the hard and fast rules of urban space. The artist gives clear indication of his preference for personal, individual context and memories over the beauty and dominance of the functionalist facades depicted.

Martin Sedlák /SK/
Martin Sedlák gives shape to the new icons of a big city lifestyle. Banal items become idols – things with a symbolic aura. In Nimbus Sedlák achieves the effect of an ethereal glowing entity by evenly lighting the periphery of a simple oval.

Michal Černušak /SK/
The veneers of advanced civilizations are unmasked in the “dream cities” of Michal Černušák. Cities of great towers and enormous city lights become a futuristic vision with fantastic complex technological devices, an environment in which natural life is being phased out and disappearing. His trademark is the use of graffiti, poetic photography, or the surrealistic image of computer games. This diversity of sources of inspiration blends on canvas through Cernušák’s artistic style, evoking the impression of a blurred “soft” vision.

Jan Gemrot /CZ/
Jan Gemrot’s domain is a figural hyper realistic painting. He works with an exquisite painterly technique which works as a tool for an artistic elaboration of a given theme. Subject matters by Jan Gemrot are focused on depiction of a story, which is not unambiguously decipherable but offers several levels of interpretation. Gemrot’s story mostly does not take place within just an image. The artist makes use of possibilities of picture cycles where it is necessary to observe several separable canvases.

David Pešat /CZ/
Impulsive expression abstraction embodies the intense emotion of David Pešat. On the one hand he empties the visual field to the extremes of imperceptible points, only to fill the space elsewhere with dense textured color or spontaneous and dynamic drawing.