Factory Hall in Karlin, Prague 8, May 14 – July 26 2009
I hesitated to put this review on-line for some time, because it’s so negative. But let’s face reality.
It’s time for another Prague Biennale, this year number 4. Once again sponsored by Matonni mineral water and once again it is located in the same old factory hall in Karlin. This year a special sub-section Prague Biennale Photo was added to the show.
My guess about how this exhibition came about goes like this. Politi and Kontova (the organizers, managers, owners and curators of Prague Biennale) invited befriended and likeminded co-curators who then in turn invited befriended and likeminded artists to take part. The result is that although the show is subdivided into partial themes, this partial themes are only vaguely distinguishable. The whole show ended up with much too many sub-sections. The result is typical for situations when no-one is really in control. The impression of the whole show is then something between a low-budget art fair and vegetable market. One fact we should not forget that the Prague Biennale 4 budget wasn’t in fact much higher that of a vegetable farmer’s. In this perspective, we should be grateful that this Prague Biennale 4 did take place at all. But should we really? A biennale withhout a budget but still boasting with more than 230 artists?
I wonder whether Prague Biennale 4 caused more pain than gain. This is always hard to say when you consider the work and time someone put into it, but for me, it just did not work. There is virtually nothing I remember from this show. There were many interesting artist’s taking part. But the selection and the presentation destroyed any kind of feeling one could have. The installation quality varied substantially, from well framed and placed canvases to a couple of inkjet prints pasted onto cardboard which looked more like a presentation of an amateur workshop’s results. I know sometimes it’s on purpose, but this did not seem to be the case here.
I remember last Prague Biennale when I was horrified by pigeons flying around and defecating straight onto the artworks. This did not happen so far, but otherwise not much changed since the last PB. Even the crappy TV sets stayed the same. The space is a bit of a problem too I think. It’s industrial and run-down ambience benefits some works but harms others.
If I have to look for a little bright spot in this vast darkness, then it was the sub-section dedicated to photography. The curators did a good job with selecting the artworks. It is the only in this part that I felt the selection was really representing a distingushable standpoint of the curator. It was regionally delineated, but the selection was also following a given inner logic which made this part of the exhibition ‘readable’ – the whole was worth more than a sum of its parts.
Apart from photography, ‘the rest’ of the show consisted up to 90 percent of paintings (canvases). Few sculptures, very few videos or spacial installations. Each artist was represented by aproximately one to three artworks. Often it was one piece only. The single artworks lacked context and rarely ‘connected’ to each other. One of the few thigs I remember was the annoying sound of the few videos filling the entire space of the factory hall.
Works I remember were that one’s which managed to create a space of their own. This was the case with Sigalit Landau’s ‘Barbed Hula’ videoinstallation – a room with beach sand on the floor and a naked women spinning a barbed wire hula hoop around her waist – and another small space designed by Kassa Boys – consisting of a performance video and props used in the video creating a continuation of the video in real space. Gulliermo Santamarina’s ‘Frei Von Jedem Schaden!’ was an eye-catching piece too – a plasterboard wall with vinyl records stuck into it in dynamic angles. Or Entang Wiharso’s ‘Unspeakable Victim’ which has a ‘post-collonial’ feel to me – metal reliefs with images that seemed to refer to some kind of animalistic non-European myths. This piece too succeeded in gaining my attention by being able to conquer a space of its own.
For most of the paintings, they were totally lost in the long long line of paintings placed on the wooden panels which were winding through the whole exhibition space. Actually this might be the reason why the photography part seemed more interesting to me. For photos, this is a more custromary way of presentation – series of one next to the other. But it was much more difficult to succeed for paintings in this kind of environment. I just remembered one artist who had some small geometrical drawings on transparent paper, which he put up on a small shelf – again it was the installation that made it stand out. I think the artist was Jiri Thyn, but I’m not sure. Overall, the section dedicated to Czech contemporary art curated by Jiri Kovanda and Edith Jerabkova, left a good impression on me. But I also suspect it is caused by the fact that I have the more background information on the artists in this section, so it was easier to ‘read’ the context. But as with the other sections, even this part did not go much further than the selection of likeminded artists in the given geographical area.
On the whole, the Prague Biennale 4 was a disappointment. I think its troubles can be traced back to a couple of factors. First, Politi and Kontova might do a better job by focusing on the management side and hiring a lead curator who could unite the overall concept and give clear directions to curators of individual sections. Second, the problems fall back to a lack of budget. But this should be solved by less quantity and more quality and not the other way around. Third, the space might be not so well suited. Errecting makeshift unpainted panels in a old factory hall and nailing paintings to them gives it a ‘punk’ feeling wich does not really resonate with all of the exhibiting artists. Many artworks just totally loose their power when put up in such a huge space.
