(10/25-12/10/2013)
Biskupsky dvur 6, Prague 1, http://www.jirisvestka.com/
Jiri Svestka Gallery focuses on a combination of Czech modernist works and young Czech contemporary artists. Viktor Takac’s usual medium are video installations or projections where he addresses how space/time is represented inside of the video footage.
For the “Studio retrospektiv” exhibition, the gallery space was cleaned up, and then touched up with minimal additions: A white cube with Left/Back/Right written on three walls, making the viewer turn around in order to align with the prescribed position, similar to how we align ourselves in our home cinemas – facing the screen left/right speakers on each side. A simple text-based work which was nevertheless quite powerful. Another work was a red curtain covering one of the gallery walls. The handout explained that it was a curtain taken from one of the artist’s videos, but that still did not really justify it as a piece to me. Another, barely visible work took the form of an architectural intervention, shifting one white cube’s walls by a certain degree, while blocking access to the gallery – a disruption to the regular grid-like building structure. This work called for comparison with Dominik Lang, another Czech artist and winner of this year’s Chalupecky Art Prize, who is also known for his minimalist interventions in existing architectural structures or for example Ayse Erkmen’s Moving Wall. The last, fourth, artwork on display was a black box with a video projection. Maybe because it was the last day of the show when I stopped by, the projector was very dim and the image barely visible. Even after spending a considerable time in the room, I could not really figure out what was going on on the screen. By extrapolating from my previous knowledge of Viktor Takac’s work, I guessed it was not the story or the images in the video that mattered, but rather the camera movement and editing that did. Anyway, without being able to see clearly, it was hard to judge this artwork, and the handout did not provide any further clues either….
Overall, I enjoyed the first work mentioned here – Left/Back/Right – this was simple yet effective. I was a bit skeptical about the red curtain and shifted plasterboard walls. I sensed Viktor Takac’s wish to extend his work beyond the video screen, and this indeed seems to be the right direction to go, however it will still need more trial and errors before a perfect balance is achieved.