“Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art” at Kunsthalle Praha
The Kunsthalle Praha is just not, strictly talking, a kunsthalle. It’s privately owned and operated by the Pudil Household Basis, which has completely loaned its assortment to it. However the alternative of title is deliberate, combining the German time period kunsthalle and Prague’s Czech title to sign the founders’ ambition to revive town’s standing as a crossroads of various European cultures and languages.
Because the Kunsthalle Praha is situated in a former energy substation, it was solely pure to inaugurate the venue with an exhibition on electrical energy and artwork. Curators Peter Weibel, Christelle Havranek, and Lívia Nolasco-Rózsás took as their place to begin the work of Zdeněk Pešánek, a Czech artist and theorist who is basically unknown exterior his native nation. Pešánek’s Kineticism: Kinetics in Artwork—Shade Music, printed in 1941, was maybe the primary e-book on kinetic artwork anyplace. Written in Czech, it has but to search out the broader readership it deserves.
Among the many works on view is Pešánek’s illuminated sculpture The Male and Feminine Torso, 1936. The curators hail the piece—manufactured from then-novel supplies reminiscent of artificial resin, neon tubes, lightbulbs, synthetic stone, and metallic—as one of many earliest neon sculptures within the historical past of artwork. The sculpture is flanked by a reproduction of fellow pioneer Naum Gabo’s Kinetic Building (Standing Wave), 1919–20, in addition to by an exhibition copy of one in all Marcel Duchamp’s Rotoreliefs, 1935/1959, and László Moholy-Nagy’s 1930 movie experiment A Lightplay: Black White Gray. The curators put these historic choices in dialogue with more moderen works from artists together with Woody Vašulka, Gyula Kosice, Christina Kubisch, and even Weibel himself.
Translated from German by Gerrit Jackson.
— Noemi Smolik
