Marie Holá: Soft Graze
14. 6. – 14. 7. 2024
opening: 13. 6. 2024 from 6 pm
curator: Julie Nešlehová
Disordered memories grow heavier, together with feelings of uncertainty and vague dissatisfaction, they cloak the mind in a fog that obscures the flow of time and rational perception of reality. We long for close contact that can liberate us from this illusive reality, a fleeting yet sharp and precise touch. Each such touch echoes our needs and fears. The tension stretching across the field between what we want and what we fear binds us in an endless, uncontrollable loop of repetitive experience. We yearn for both healing and protection, thus exposing ourselves to danger. The boundary between what protects us and what threatens us is uncertain. The only certainty is what we blindly desire. We sail through a landscape of experiences, some of which we want to touch again, others we do not. Close proximity is alluring but can also be very painful.
Can we eliminate an emotional pathogen by simply removing the harmful tissue without addressing the real core of the issue? What happens when a technical instrument intervenes in our physical and mental existence? Can a technical touch, which disrupts the timeless existence locked in the foggy loop, create the accelerator to set events in motion?
Soft Graze is a set of tools with a fictitious purpose, opening the path for self-service use according to individual needs. The instruments can be industrially produced, with maximum effect achieved in their duplication. Duality and pairing are essential for existence itself, as well as for the realization of touch or movement. Instruments made of rubber and steel form a functional coexistence of organic and inorganic materials. The tools can cause small abrasions, slight injury, but can also heal. The physical form of the instruments reacts with invisible tension, prompting action, breaking purposeless silence and inactivity. The duality permeating the many layers of the theme creates a playful trap that (dis)allows perceiving the differences between human and non-human touch. Which of them can be destructive and which desirable?
The exhibition is the diploma project of Marie Holá from the VU4 – Critical Optics, UMPRUM, and the curatorial project by Julie Nešlehová from the Department of Theory and History of Art, UMPRUM.
The Soft Graze exhibition is supported by the MŠMT, from the funds of Specific University Research for 2024.
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,
GESTOR – The Union for the Protection of Authorship
Media partners: ArtMap, artalk.cz and jlbjlt.net
