1280 km from Prague - Small Structures Are Beautiful vol2. Kubicek's drawing cycles and installations are based on personal impressions, moods and feelings, drawn from his extensive journeys, and condensed in texts and images. The exhibition reflects the artist's interest in the relationship between text and image and his penchant for linear structures.
In cooperation with Prague’s etc.galerie,
uqbar project space will present the first solo exhibition of young
Czech artist Martin Kubíček (1981, Prague, lives and works in Prague).
Kubíček’s drawing cycles and installations are based on personal
impressions, moods and feelings, drawn from his extensive journeys, and
condensed in texts and images. All his drawings are created digitally on
a computer taking advantage of the possibilities of modern vector
programs. He combines the resulting images, based primarily on his
travel photographs, with his own texts into a complex whole, meant to be
read in a linear way. Text plays an important role in Kubíček's work in
general and takes on the function of an image.
The exhibition /1280 km from Prague /reflects Kubíček's interest in the
relationship between text and image and his penchant for linear
structures. The artist shows a series of 96 postcards-sized "romantic
coloured prints," as he says, that are linked by the recurring motif of
a mosque. The impressions of the hundreds of different mosques Martin
Kubíček saw on his travels through South East Europe, Turkey and Iran
provide the backdrop for a diary-like narrative. The individual prints
are each autonomous art works, and equally form a cohesive whole by
their linear order in space and the narrative, which develops in
fragments through the series. The viewer is invited to browse this
unusual book, and is asked: Did this really happen? Is it an authentic
story or an invented fiction? What is the relationship between the
images and the text? Is there any link?
Martin Kubíček explains, "I'm not interested in the story I tell in my
texts. I could also write about something else. It is completely
unimportant to me whether there is a main point or not. I’m instead
looking for the condition of narrating itself. The story is actually
dispensable and simple. The images seem to accompany the text although
they are not related at all. It is like when you try to talk about the
‘immediate’ or when you try to implant your story into a new, unrelated
context. In fact, it is basically a collection of romantic picture
postcards; it’s my mosque collection. There is no link between the text
and what is depicted. Nevertheless, the combination of text and image in
the form of a postcard creates a certain atmosphere."
(Text Marketa Vinglerova)
With this project uqbar starts a long-term series titled /Small
Structures Are Beautiful /that is dedicated to exchanges with
non-profit spaces in Europe. /1280 km from Prague/ is the second part of
an exchange project between the project space uqbar, Berlin, and
etc.galerie http://www.etcgalerie.cz, Prague, supported by the
German-Czech Future Fund, the Cultural Administration of the Berlin
Senate, the Danish Arts Agency and the Goethe-Institut Prague.
On February 26, 2009, 7 p.m., Jiří Skála and Markéta Vinglerová, who
run etc.galerie together with Jiří Franta, will present their programme
and discuss the role of non-profit spaces for the Prague art scene. The
talk will take place at General Public http://www.generalpublic.de/,
Schönhauser Allee 167 c, in Berlin and will be held in English.
Contact: Markéta Vinglerová mailto:info@etcgalerie.cz, Antje Weitzel
mailto:aweitzel@uqbar-ev.de
uqbar
a project by Dorothee Bienert, Dortje Drechsel, Marina Sorbello, Antje Weitzel
Schwedenstr. 16 | D -13357 Berlin
Friday-Saturday, Sunday Wedding, 2-6:30 p.m. and by appointment