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'A Guiding Dog for a Blind Dog', a Group Show at FUTURA, Prague

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Exhibition view, room 1
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Sophie Jung
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José Montealegre
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Lukas Hofmann, David Střeleček
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Sóley Ragnarsdóttir
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Nico Walker
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Sophie Jung
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Lukas Hofmann
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Veronika Čechmánková
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Josefin Arnell
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Saemundur Thor Helgason
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front: Nico Walker, back: Valinia Svoronou
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Nico Walker (detail)
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Valinia Svoronou (detail)
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Tereza Sýkorová
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Federica Partinico
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Lukas Hofmann, David Střeleček
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David Střeleček
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David Střeleček (detail)
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Federica Partinico
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poster by Annie Sprinkle
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Andrew Wagner
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Matúš Buranovský, Nat Marcus
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Sophie Jung
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Lukas Hofmann, David Střeleček
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Veronika Čechmánková
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Valinia Svoronou
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Sóley Ragnarsdóttir
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Tom Kobialka
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David Střeleček
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Lukas Hofmann, David Střeleček
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front: Illuminati card game, back: Nico Walker
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Veronika Čechmánková

A guiding dog for a blind dog leads us into the medium of contemporary art itself, then pauses to sniff at the air around it.

The news is fake sometimes and the horizon’s relative. The flat-earth movement thrives while people are investing in competitive drone racvácing and building dwellings in the ocean; we started delivering lectures in saunas as works of art, but it's still paintings that bankers buy. Normality has always been crafted into a condition by the interested powers and parties, made a brittle instrument to mark what’s ​abnormal​, ​unreal​, ​undesirable​. The brace the word sits on, however, is of mesh, liquid. It’s nebulous. As soon as it designates a stable boundary, the demarcation jiggles and splits like foam. From this wet threshold, ​A guiding dog for a blind dog​ opens at Futura, curated by 2018 Jindřich Chalupecký Award nominee Lukas Hofmann / Saliva.

Hofmann is known for his durational performances—collections of sensuous information, ritual formats; embodied moodboards that seem to follow a set of unspoken principles like, well, life. Similarly, the group exhibition at Futura comprises an array of memorabilia, objects, artworks, performances and lectures; rather than enacting the axioms, however, these works carry out an examination of reality’s soft scaffold—the truisms by which we knew it becoming damp, and possibly tearing. Thematically, they range from the sociological construct of a workweek, to debates over the earth truly being round. And in their speculation, the works also form their own scaffold: veinous and measured, a mesh of branches and industrial cinches by David Strelecek hangs overhead in a connective node of the gallery; at eye-level, Soley Ragnarsdottir’s resin portrait of a dog; gesturing to the visitor’s shin from the ground is a skeleton, reclining on ledge of mortared tiles: a sculpture by Jose Montealegre.

The works of ​A guiding dog for a blind dog​ relate like a rootstock, connecting horizontally without a central axis, viewpoint or venue. Throughout the exhibition’s run, a number of live durational programs will send a pulse throughout this network—such as a one-act play exploring the identity of an institution, staged by the arts organization Tranzit; a performance and a lecture by Sophie Jung; and a recital in Prague’s venerable iSauna by Valentýna Janů. It may seem unorthodox for an art show to extend into steaming rooms enclosed in wood. Or not. It may be atypical to display fashion styling in the gallery setting, as is here with the work of Nico Walker. But the dialogue transpiring through this exhibition is as much about the codes of reality as the codes of contemporary art. Their boundary is, of course, more like a lattice than a wall.

Another story on the blueprint: ​A guiding dog for a blind dog​ also includes a linguistic composition modeled by Nat Marcus, the author of this press release. The text will act as an annotation and narration of the gallery exhibition, presented in the form of an artwork. Its next rendering will be in a catalogue designed and published by Parallel Practice; the volume will also collect documentation and a dossier of interviews with the artists. Perhaps you will read it less like a catalogue, and more like an almanac for the worlds turning Futura inside and out this spring, whether you find them flat or round. At the moment, you read its first tier—simply a diffusion of pixels.

— Nat Marcus

24.4.18 — 17.6.18

Josefin Arnell, Matúš Buranovský, Veronika Čechmánková, Maria Gorodeckaya, Saemundur Thor Helgason, Lukáš Hofmann, Hope Recycling Station, Valentýna Janů, Sophie Jung, Nat Marcus, Magdalena Mitterhofer and Shade Théret, José Montealegre, Federica Partinico, Sóley Ragnarsdóttir, David Střeleček, Valinia Svoronou, Tereza Sýkorová, Tranzit, Andrew Wagner, Nico Walker, Tomasz Kobialka and others

Curated by Lukáš Hofmann

Research Assistant: Besfort Nedjbi

FUTURA

'Ashes to Lashes, Dust to Lust', Group Show at GROVE, Berlin

'Victim of Cosmetics' by Claire Barrow in a repurposed office space, London

'Digital Anomalies' by Nicolás Lamas at FORM, Wageningen

'IT'S DIFFICULT TO EXPLAIN SO I STAY QUIET' by Lukas Glinkowski at Galería Fran R

'The place that can never be' by Anna Taganzeva at Plague Space, Krasnodar

'Chocolate Goblin' by Travis John Ficarra at Glasshouse, Victoria

'MILITARY POP', Group Show at Spas Setun, Moscow

TARGET GROUP SHOW, conceived by Hannes Schmidt at BRAUNSFELDER, Cologne

'DISTIRA' by Irati Inoriza at Galeria Fran Reus, Palma de Mallorca

'Underground Memorandum' by Richard Nikl at Shore, Vienna

'All Watched Over by Emissaries of Loving Grace' by Louis Morlæ at Duarte Sequeir

'itsanosofadog *It’s an arse of a dog' by Amanda Moström, Rose Easton, London

'Deceiving players' by Rimma Arslanov at KOENIG2 by_robbygreif, Vienna

'Sizzling Hot' by Rosa Lüders at 14a, Hamburg

'The Particular Matter of a Pisces Rug' by Kelly Kaczynski at Weatherproof, Chica

'L’oracolo' by Michele Cesaratto at MURKA, Florence

'The Tiler' by Trevor Bourke at Afternoon Projects, Vancouver

'Whaleboat' by Zukhra Salakhova at Daipyat gallery, Voronezh

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