Šimon Kadlčák: What I Dream About X When I Happen to Fall Asleep
March 28 – April 29, 2018
opening: March 27, 2018 from 6 pm

Performing at the opening will be:
DLAB (Soft)
Nina Kish (Liquid Love)

curated by: Gabriela Kotiková

“I spoke to Pelican about it.”
Andrej Babiš

The title “O čem sním X když náhodou spím (What I Dream About X When I Happen to Fall Asleep)” is not only a moral robbery of the title of Andrej Babiš’s book, but also a nightmare of all protectors of the “natural” order. The exhibition wanders from serious contemplations about the disintegration and variability of ethnic, gender, as well as generic identification to virtual xenophile fantasies about shooting multiplied white dancers in GTA: Vice City. Insomnia alternates with narcolepsy, comes back persistently and balances on a scarily fine line. Its symbol is precisely the X in the title, which divides identities equally sharply, as well as artificially. It is for that reason the dominant position in the exhibition belongs to the wall painting offering a new view of the media anti-hero Rachel Dolezal. Šimon Kadlčák states that Rachel Dolezal “was discovered by American media as a curiosity in 2015. At that time she was forced to resign from her position as the director of the regional chapter of NACCP – an organisation asserting the rights of African Americans – because she (being ethnically white) was passing herself off as ethnically black. Dolezal later published an autobiographical book and today she advocates the right of recognition of racial identity not on the basis of ethnic origin but one’s one subjective identification.” The mural, which is carried out in her honour in a form referring to famous images of heroes asserting social emancipation, dominates the installation in a simulated white cube. This becomes the space for the furnishing of a rehab clubhouse, living room – gaming club, where the physical expressions of addiction have subsided, but shapes continue to live. It is not that simple to silence them, like the desire for self-determination is stronger than social conventions. That is why burnt out tech heads still feel the potential to be liberated (23) from the dictate of productivity, discontinue the supply of stimulants and not grow for the growth of capital, but for the collective fusion in a horizontal mass of images and sounds.

Šimon Kadlčák graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno, where he began his studies in the studio of Václav Stratil and completed them in the studio of Pavel Sterec. He works with painting and drawing, as well as digital graphic and video variations thereof. Being also a curator and critic he is aware of the fact that contemporary abstract painting is the most co-modifiable media. That is one of the reasons he uses his precisely adopted technique in a cryptic and speculative style. He uses pop culture symbols with memetic potential for his own political agenda, and lets the subculture visual code from the history of rave utopia be revived in new conditions in order to fill the decoration with its originally emancipated charge.

Lumír Nykl

The program of the Jeleni Gallery 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: ArtMap, jlbjlt.net and UMA: You Make Art