We’ve Met Plato, but We Haven’t Read Him

The exhibition presents possible ways of grasping, interpreting, misinterpreting, and parodying philosophical theses and thinking. The ironic title of the exhibition refers to the excessive use of references and quotations of theoretical texts used by curators and artists to contextualise their artworks. Plato is a placeholder in the exhibition title – many people have encountered his Allegory of the Cave, for example, but could they apply it correctly? The visualisation of abstract concepts and metaphors behind rationality is the focus of Aleš Zapletal’s drawings. David Helán, on the other hand, works with meta-rational reasoning, based on which he creates seemingly illogical language systems. Alexandra Naušová uses universal concepts to evoke images that are not transferable only based on the listener’s own experience. Lucie Nováčková’s work also draws primarily on internal dialogue, and thanks to the marked temporality and processuality of her work, she tries to convey a metaphor of working with one’s own mind. The last, but not least level of the exhibition is the work of Martin Vlček, which draws attention to the impossibility of simultaneous non-existence in two independent places – in nature and industrial space.

David Helán is an artist whose work transcends and penetrates various media and systems of thinking. A significant part of his work consists of working with text, neologisms, Dada, and poetry. For a project at Pragovka Gallery, Helán, a reverse speleologist, installs a series of paintings that are a combination of intimately constructed dialogues, and poems on a slightly larger scale than he is used to, the quality of which he would like to ground in a measure of the time of their creation, complemented by figurative contours. The basis of this figurative moment is based on photographs from Helán’s performances. Similarly, his previous long-standing work is followed by a new vocabulary that works with space both physically and metaphysically in its current form of adjustment.

Alexandra Naušová is finishing her Bachelor’s degree at the Digital Media Studio led by Michaela Thelenová and Radek Jandera in Ústí nad Labem. Her processual performances and audiovisual works react critically but with humorous exaggeration to phenomena that resonate in society, art, technological development, or nature. For the exhibition „We´ve met Plato, but we haven´t read him“ she created a new recording from the series Audio Excursions, which will guide you through the cave with universal concepts.
Lucie Nováčková graduated in textile design (UHK Hradec Králové) and painting (FaVU). In addition to her production and curatorial activities at Pragovka Gallery, she also works on her art. The aim of the last few years has been to develop her technology within fiber arts, which she applied for example in the work presented at the Flying Inn exhibition. In the installation Black Latency, she combines painting and threads in one object – a processional sculpture. This installation thus combines both of the artist’s basic artistic approaches. The mechanism used in the looms becomes a medium that transforms the element of painting from paint in a fishbowl into something like a living organism, a gradually expanding mass.

Martin Vlček is a graduate of cultural studies (Faculty of Arts, Charles University), new media, and scenography. He works with performance, video, and installations. As part of his long-term visual exploration of places and their influence on memory and perception, he has created a series of videos dealing with the attempt to transmit them, deliberately denying the concept of non-site. He intends to bring a new video to the Pragovka Gallery in which he places himself in an almost surreal environment, deliberately blending two worlds – abandoned factories and wild woods, places characterized by abandonment or solitude. At the same time, the combination of these two non-human environments confronts the viewer with his loneliness and lostness in the world. The video depicts Martin Vlček as a worker who returns to the factory where he has worked all his life, but without its machinery and operations, he finds himself as lost there as he is in the middle of the deep forest. Like a mushroom picker who forgot to pick mushrooms. The video runs on a loop, the mushroom picker is trapped in the loop forever. The video installation is supplemented by artifacts of mushrooms and bolts, or mushroom-bolts or bolt-mushrooms, and alloys of strange black matter.

Aleš Zapletal graduated from the Painting Studio at UMPRUM and is currently a student in the Ph.D. programme in the studio of Vladimír Skrepl at the Academy of Fine Arts. His work has long been concerned with environmental themes or the visual interpretation and misinterpretation of philosophy and scientific topics. In the project „We´ve Met Plato, But We Haven´t Read Him“ he will exhibit a series of previously unpublished drawings. These were created based on research for his dissertation – drawings deal with the visualization of abstract concepts and metaphors behind rationality.

Photo: Marcel Rozhoň