THE BELL 2010 Young Art Biennial

Dům U Kamenného zvonu /The Stone Bell/
d. 3/10, 2010
Tue – Sun 10.00 a.m. – 8.00 p.m.

What´s contemporary young art like? There is no single exhaustive answer to this question, just as there is no way of lodging within the historic medieval grounds of The Golden Bell the output of an entire generation of artists. Rather, the aim of what is already the seventh Young Art Biennial is to introduce to the general public works by a select group of promising artists active on the present-day scene, with an emphasis on the breadth of the spectrum of their individual approaches. 

Taking part in the show are twenty artists. Some of them already have to their credit a number of major triumphs at home as well as internationally, and are widely regarded as promising representatives of contemporary Czech art. Others have so far had virtually no chance to have their output displayed in public, and are still unknown to the broad public. In contrast to the biennial´s previous editions, the participants´ age brackets have now shifted towards more recent years of birth, with quite a few of those taking part being still students. Apart from the "classic" art schools, such as the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, or the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, this edition of the biennial is for the first time bringing in a significant representation of graduates and students of the Academy of Cinematic Arts. Five of those represented here were born in Slovakia, but have long lived and worked in the Czech Republic. Most of them were born in the late 1970s and the 1980s. They have grown up in a globalized world, in a society embracing the values of liberal democracy. Their first artistic attempts date to the beginning of the new millenium. There is no common denominator for their production as regards either subject matter or formal idiom. In drawing up the exhibition´s roster of artists, the organizers focused on the criterion of diversity, guided by the ambition to transcend the established patterns of perceiving the visual arts, and to point at its correlations with other areas of culture. Thus, the show juxtaposes paintings, photographs and conceptual art works on the one hand, with such forms as comics strips, works influenced by street art, documentary films or music video clips, on the other.

Young artists of today don´t see themselves as members of a single cohesive community. Their world is diversified, falling into a plethora of smaller-scale entities. Notwithstanding this diversity, an incontestable characteristic of contemporary young art is its tendency towards collective projects. No longer do artists stay confined in the solitude of their studios; instead, they often create their works in collaboration with other artists, or even with the involvement of members of the public or of spectators who thereby become direct participants in the creative process.
More than a few artists lack the ambition to produce definitive, permanent works, but rather focus their endeavour on the process of creation per se. Abandoning the role of a maker of elaborately crafted, narrowly specialized objects, today´s artist assumes the position at the centre of activities diversified in terms of production and concept alike, through the execution of which he or she examines the functioning of various social mechanisms, as well as art´s potential of intervening into these mechanisms.
The criteria for selecting the biennial participants have been geared towards artists working with the media of photography, video, drawing, and text. Some of the works on display resemble diaries kept by their makers, while others seem to relate to web blogs or other means of communication characteristic for the era of the internet and social networks. Contemporary young artists are cosmopolitan, yet at the same time they are also highly sensitive to developments in their immediate surroundings. Not surprisingly therefore, another common feature is their concern with social issues, and with various, often very personal analyses of the world they live in.
Last but not least, young artists turn attention towards the phenomenon of art as such, investigating into its properties, striving to capture the essence of the various media, and subjecting them to different extreme tests. A possible answer to the question of how art itself stands in the face of the demands posed on it by the young generation, can perhaps also be found at the present show.

Admission: CZK 120 / 60