We cordially invite you to the second of three guided tours of the exhibition
Ma_Scary
29 June from 16:00
Radka Bodzewicz, Lucie Rosicka and Moemi Yamamoto will guide you through the exhibition.
Masks - ritual objects that underline, hide or change identity
of its wearer. The most common means by which humans protect themselves or try to
to interact with that which transcended them - forces of nature, spirits, demons or gods. Their origins lie in ancient history, and although their purpose and form have shifted and changed in meaning over time, they are still part of human everyday life today. The exhibition Ma_scary shares the original masks of natural peoples with those found in the work of contemporary visual artists in a common space. In the second plan, it also opens up themes such as tradition, horror or disguise.
Radek Wohlmuth.
Patrik Adamec / Karíma Al-Mukhtarová / Karel Balcar / Radka Bodzewicz / Eva Fajčíková / Matěj Hrbek / Tomáš Jetela / Jiří Marek / Petr Nikl / Marcela Putnová / Lucie Rosická / Jan Sakař / Sota Sakuma / František Skála / František Antonín Skála / Timo / Jakub Tomáš / Jakub Tytykalo / Jindra Viková / Jan Vytiska / Moemi Yamamoto
WE ASKED ALL THE ARTISTS WHAT "MASK" MEANS TO THEM, BELOW YOU WILL FIND SOME OF THE ANSWERS:
Radka Bodzewicz:
Persona vs. Shadow
We all cultivate our Persona, and so does our Shadow. It is the dark, intuitive and animalistic aspects of our being that we wage an eternal battle with, and under the overlay of the social mask we neglect them. Sometimes we are not even aware of their existence. But they are part of the wholeness and completeness of our nature. Nothing may be what it seems at first sight, and so our true nature may also be hidden in a kind of bubble, beneath the layers of our everyday theatre that we all experience without exception. In the same way, an image can hide its existential essence through its exultant colouring.
Lucie Rosická:
Beyond The Red Glow is a unique series of self-portraits created for this exhibition, featuring a mask with a red LED light. This mask is meant to function in the paintings as a symbol to capture the present day, the desire for unrealistic beauty and paradoxical moments within a young woman's life. What I find fascinating is the contrast of the soft human body with the humanoid expression of the mask. The things we as women are willing to do to delay aging and the attention we pay to the face compared to other places.
Moemi Yamamoto:
When the word mask is said, I'm reminded of the kind of masks worn at Japanese festivals or Noh games. People dancing in masks look comical but also a little scary, like they're beings from another world. It's not quite a fantasy world, but a realm on the border between reality and fiction. A strange mixture of imagination and legend, designed to make something spiritual present. It is something that fascinates me, and at the same time the perfect motif for my paintings, which allows me to break free from the homogeneous, empty, modern time. The masks rather go against this ordinariness and belong to a special feeling dimension that we know from carnivals. By the way, I actually saw the strange mask of the laughing old man in the upper left corner in Japan, but because I was not allowed to take a picture of it, I painted it from memory. I remember feeling a wild and scary energy from it at first sight.
Entrance to the gallery is free.
