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Argišt Alaverdyan in Infinite Universes: Weary Knights, Shiny Altars & Heavy Gods DLC at the Czech Centre Paris

Video-game influences and aesthetics are a natural part of the work of generations whose lives are inseparably bound up with digital culture. It often seems as if fantastic fragments and motifs become an aesthetic shorthand capable of evoking warm nostalgia on the one hand and a sense of mythical supernaturalness on the other. A bit of magic within a supposedly rational social system in which myths have seemingly disappeared. This exhibition emerges from that tension, yet at the same time deliberately transcends it. For art inspired by video games is most powerful when it avoids mere illustrativeness. Elsewhere, the focus turns to the forces that act upon us within virtual realities. The digital vocabulary of Argišt Alaverdyan balances on the edge of painterly abstraction. Obvious resemblance (for instance to genre properties) gives way in favor of fundamental elements. Simple backgrounds recalling the basic canvases of 3D modeling programs or game engines are overlaid with fragmented shards of bodies—from limbs to digital chakras, some kind of force fields, to an (elven?) face emerging from a cube. He may well be suggesting that the boundary between the virtual and the real is permeable. It is a play of forms and identities, hinting at the ways in which the computer influences us while we play—and how we, in turn, influence it. Simply rendered graphic elements seem to represent a layer that manipulates all of this, a medium through which an invisible force turns the game camera. Whether it is an exploration of the nature of nostalgia or of fantasy motifs with their myth-making power, the breaking down of game scenes into their elementary particles, or the construction of altars inspired by digital perspectives, the works in this exhibition are traces of a reality that, outside the windows of the Czech House, itself increasingly resembles a video game. The ball of Ariadne’s thread begins to unwind. The quest begins. Loading… Ondřej Trhoň (extract)

Image: Argišt Alaverdyan, Entity 13, 2021. Courtesy the artist.

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Pavla Dundálková in conversation with Marek Meduna. Potyčka na území nikoho, Center for Contemporary Arts Prague.

She had to put her calling temporarily on hold. Bystanders felt she had shed her skin. It’s growing, expanding in all directions. What’s up is down. Shallowness was being transformed into vastness. She laid small souvenirs behind the elastic membrane of urgent duties. Washing, ironing, cooking, being a step ahead, minding her own business and smiling. The last above all. A ruffled, loosely flowing fabric stretched across the room. It divided the space in two. It was easy to cross, but far from visible. An endless, free-floating feed of rising standards from Instagram permeated the nearby space. Influencers mingled with the cooing of pigeons on the windowsill. She looked up at the window and saw only the passing of time. Everyone needs certain conditions to live. Things were different in Bertold Brecht’s time than today. Entitles and rights dug like thorns into her soft skin. She typed her name into Google. Over the years, information has been hierarchised in different ways, the algorithm has changed without this being visible in its instantiation. At first glance everything remained the same. She opened the box and walked deep into the forest. The path turned into a trail. The trail dissolved into dense undergrowth from which the rustling of hidden animals could be heard. She wanted to coax a few dryads, though she knew not why. She hadn’t even seen their silhouette yet. Brokilon was silent. She set up camp for the evening. She sat staring into the darkness of the chest. She chewed foxglove on her tired, aching body. When she awoke in the morning, they stood silently around her. Slender and blending into their trees. One by one they told her that the sight of soil, dirt, mud and cracked earth gave them the greatest pleasure. The soil has its suppleness, its colour, its texture and its latent shape. They feel a piece of the whole world in the palm of their hands. What excites them the most is the space inside, where the soil comes alive and the seed becomes the germ for photosynthesis and new life. So they feel included in its course. The parable of the cave is turned inside out. The stalactites and stalagmites were eating into the open space. Truth has divided itself into too many simultaneous and individually undemanding tasks. There are doors that have been closed until the end of the world. Marek Meduna

Potyčka na území nikoho, eds. Marek Meduna, Zuzana Blochová, published by Center for Contemporary Arts Prague, 2024

Image: Pavla Dundálková, Multitasking hand, 2021. Photo by Jiří Thýn. Courtesy Stone Projects.

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Pavla Dundálková in Poem of Powerful Struggle at the Kabinet Zlín

The exhibition Poem of Powerful Struggle as a whole opens up the question of the emancipation of gender identity from structural constraints to the possibility of its future position outside the binary frame. Here the body is not a mere object, but an active space for negotiating power, autonomy and normativity. Through personal experiences, historical references and contemporary visual culture, the artists reflect on the dynamics of female identity in an environment that is constantly redefining what it means to be a woman. The experience of motherhood and education, as reflected by Pavla Dundálková in the work of the breastfeeding woman Růžena, reveals the transformation of bodily perception and the loss of shame in situations where care becomes an urgent need. Breastfeeding as a biological necessity breaks down the boundaries between private and public space, while the body of the woman finds itself in a paradoxical situation – it is both a source of nourishment and an object of social control. Dundálková’s work reflects on the importance of one’s own choice, which she also materializes in the sculpture of the unshaven woman Sabina, symbolizing not only naturalness, but also defiance of aesthetic norms. This motif opens up a wider field of reflection on the body, whose form and perception are constantly subjected to the pressure of social expectations. Anežka Januschka Kořínková (extract)

Image: Pavla Dundálková, Sabine, 2025. Courtesy the artist.

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Richard Nikl in conversation with Marek Meduna. Potyčka na území nikoho, Center for Contemporary Arts Prague.

Once upon a time, in an exhausted era in which nothing could apparently happen. Every exhibition is a small battle in the heat of the culture war. Individual skirmishes both consolidate and undermine constellations of opinions. Their rhythm and harmony is the heartbeat of a warring community. The culture war is both portend and sublimation. It is easy to escape its roar. Opinions can be circumvented. The edges are rounded for user comfort. Excesses seep into online news bulletins, where they are quickly digested by the machinery of individualised feeds. Shapes are blurred, masses and colours are re-interpreted. The gaze penetrates even where it is not invited. Individually invented expressions (řasokoule, zooludie, ableism, mallogic, post-irony, wokerarti, herderizza) with indistinct meanings may be a symptom of our prolonged immaturity, dangerous exuberance or cultural schizophrenia.

In the polyrhythm of rhymes and consonants, more than one cultural heritage with its tendency to moralise has been dumped, like a lump at the foot of the simply boiled flavours of sauces and the thick stock of soups. Several warnings hang on the fence of the wild apple trees. Their compliance warns that the murky rivers of culture move towards dissolving in the sensation of an ocean. The brackish water slowly evaporates, leaving the cargo collected on its way down the continent and like a raincloud heads for revival in a clear mountain spring. It is not for nothing that the word Mohan (Main) is derived from the Indo-European mei or water and the word Alps from the Latin albus (white) or altus (high). The hedonistic response of contemporary art is articulated both in cycles and fractures. Marek Meduna (extract)

Potyčka na území nikoho, eds. Marek Meduna, Zuzana Blochová, published by Center for Contemporary Arts Prague, 2024

Image: Richard Nikl, Garden, 2024, 180 x 90 cm. Courtesy the artist.

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