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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 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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