Radek Brousil: Black and White Photography
18. 3. – 31. 3. 2016
opening: 17. 3. 2016

curator: Jiří Ptáček

For some time now Radek Brousil has been focusing on the analysis of the photographic medium. With every new collection and exhibition he treads the path through a wild jungle of questions accompanying photography. He works with formal aspects of photographic blow-ups or situations in a photographic studio. Last time – as the finalist and later the laureate of last year’s  Oskár Čepan Award – he matured all the way to the reflexion of production and business strategies of the photographic industry, part of which is the inequality of those photographed based on the colour of their skin.

In the Gallery Jelení, Brousil freely follows up on this topic using black and white photography. The arrangement of the exhibition into a sort of presentation of raw products (negatives instead of blow-ups) draws the audience into the sphere of inversive images that instigate the imagination of a classical photographer. The contrast of dark and light, and the reversibility of the polarity of negative-positive, accompanied photography through its analogue history. It formed our awareness about the possible meanings in the opposition of black with white. As an influential medium it partook on the modelling of the collective awareness of society. The exhibition Black and White Photography is based on the seemingly innocent aesthetic game with the inversion of a negative. Nothing of what Radek Brousil photographs in this way is innocent, however. The presentation of unsorted material provides everyone with the possibility to orientate in it in his/her own way. Part of this orientation, however, will probably be an encounter with ethical views of using photographs in their historical perspective.

Jiří Ptáček

Jeleni Gallery exhibition program is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and Prague City Council
Media support: Artycok.tv, ArtMap, jlbjlt.net a UMA: You Make Art