Ivana Bendová and Zdeněk Ryneš: I Want
15. 2. – 12. 3. 2017
opening: 14. 2. 2017 from 6pm
curated by: Barbora Klímová
I like the idea that some duos are connected by complementing characteristics. It is only when they are together that they act in a complex way. Complementariness manifests in projects that Ivana Bendová and Zdeněk Ryneš accomplished independently. In her work, Ivana primarily deals with current social topics such as the phenomenon of blogging. In principle, she rejects various anticipatable solutions, the system or traditional media. Zdeněk Ryneš, on the contrary, has been focusing on moving image for a long time. He is interested in various universal principles through which he views his immediate surroundings. They both graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno (in 2015 and 2016). And although they express themselves differently in their individual work, cooperation and mutual influence are a natural part of most of the projects that they have carried out.
The collective exhibition of these two artists in Jelení Gallery is entitled I Want. It reflects their shared privacy. Ivana and Zdeněk intuitively examine questions on the edge of institutionalized and mental ownership, appropriation, usage of space and things in mutual relationship and in the environment of one specific place – land and house.
They are exhibiting recordings of civil events during which they simply classified and described the space and things that they relate to. Based on this inspirational experiment they develop the narration about why and how they use things. Ideal notions about property are crossed here with limiting realities. Zdeněk wrote to me in an email about the narrative of the videos that they described personal situations and gradually “purified them of personal deposits (something had to remain there because otherwise it seemed to be too clichéd) and the result were schematized descriptions of situations that should primarily reveal the sides (I, they, etc.), which are in a specific relationship.”
In the project being exhibited, Ivana and Zdeněk are presented as she and he – representatives of the female and male perspectives. It takes place in the interior of a house, and on a snow-covered garden, where the speaking about its cultivation may sound like a metaphor for various situations of a person within the system. Their positions are not political or unequivocal. Sometimes they are even contradicting – for example when we read the statement in the garden: “Maybe she is controlled by the fact that this place does not belong to her” and then we hear in the same context: “She is trying to expand her space.” These can resonate in the subjective questioning of the viewer about what is actually mine, how and why do I feel about ownership, how does that mirror the view of the other person, how does the other person reflect it, and how does it work in some relationship.
Barbora Klímová
Jeleni Gallery exhibition program is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Council, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, City District Prague 7
Media support: Artycok.tv, ArtMap, jlbjlt.net and UMA: You Make Art
