Exhibition (In)visible Patterns

From 14 March to 25 April 2019, the exhibition (In)Visible Patterns will present successful Czech artists living in New York – Kristýna and Marek Milde together with artist Petra Gupta Valentová. The opening of the exhibition, curated by Silvie Stanická, will take place on March 13, 2019 at 18:00 at G18. (In)visible Patterns Kristýna and Marek Milde – Petra Gupta Valentová Today’s global world and consumerist lifestyles raise many fundamental questions to which there are no easy answers, but it is existentially important to seek them out and view them not in isolation but in context. One such challenge is the environmental issue, both in relation to (post)industrial society and the role of the individual in it, and to the so-called third world. The exhibition (In)Visible Patterns, dedicated to the work of Kristýna and Marek Milde and Petra Gupta Valenta, presents a selection of their environmental projects that seek to actively contribute to the general discourse. While the Mildes pursue the phenomenon of a special kind of modern man, whom they have named Homo Interius, an individual who spends most of his life in a bubble inside a white cube, separated from the influence of his surroundings, passive, with a purely interior attitude towards the world, Gupta Valentová has recently founded IM.PRINTED, a brand focusing on Indian woodblock printing and Czech blueprinting techniques. She is also behind the BBs – Bagru Bhabhis project representing patterns and yardage from Bagru printers. However, the author is by no means only interested in the products themselves, but above all in actively contributing to the current topic of sustainable cooperation with artisans from the Third World, who should become the real owners of their work, not just its suppliers. Kristýna and Marek Milde Kristýna and Marek Milde, Czech artists living in Brooklyn, New York, work as an artistic duo. Their work focuses on contemporary environmental themes. They often use the environment of the home as a platform for exploring the manifestations of cultural and human alienation from nature, from indigenous relationships and contexts. Current environmental issues are of course closely related to our culture of living, in which industrial and post-industrial buildings dominate nature. The world within the four walls now generally functions as our primary reality, in which alienation from the external context is invisible and has become part of everyday life. In a series of projects called Domestic Landscapes, the Mildes focus on the principles and concepts that define the domestic space in the context of culture and environment. They seek to make visible the ingrained conventions and stereotypes that create the illusion of autonomy of living indoors, seemingly independent of the environmental context. They present the space of the home as a multi-layered organism of its inhabitants’ relations to the wider context of the internal and external world. They ask the basic, seemingly obvious questions What constitutes a home within a home? What is the color or smell of the home? and seek the links that anchor human identity in the personal space of the private universe. They explore how art and design might alleviate environmental deprivation and contribute to a more integral lifestyle. Kristýna and Marek Milde use a variety of presentation forms to communicate their world view, from installations and workshops to do-it-yourself improvements in which they explore common household activities such as furnishing, cleaning and decorating, and then transform their findings into situations and symbolic models leading to greater environmental self-awareness. Petra Gupta Valentová Petra Gupta Valentová lives and works in New York, Prague and Jaipur. She works with traditional Indian hand-printed woodblock printing, which is one of the oldest textile printing techniques in the world, and Czech blueprint printing, which last year was included in the UNESCO Intangible World Heritage List. In her projects, Gupta Valentová emphasises co-design. “If we want to do things ethically, we have to include the group of people we work with in the creative process. Especially in the case of traditional third world craft techniques. That’s why I do workshops with the printers from Bagr and together we create the designs that come out of them. I don’t tell them what to do and how to do it, but instead I motivate them to create their own. My goal is that the new designs will again come out of this community, as was common before, and that they will be priced on the basis of royalties. I actively print with them and respond to their suggestions and they in turn respond to mine. We sketch together.” Petra Gupta Valentová is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and Hunter College in New York. She has been working intensively on woodblock printing for the last five years – first in her art installations, and now as part of her PhD studies at the Textile Studio at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. The curator of the exhibition is Silvie Stanická.   In addition to the exhibition itself, which will be open until 25 April 2019, you can also look forward to an accompanying program.   You can also take part in a yoga class, which will take place in the Gallery on 16 April 2019 at 17:00, more information and registration on the Gallery’s Facebook page. The guided tour with Petra Gupta Valentová will take place on 25 April 2019 at 18:30 in the G18 Gallery and will be accompanied by a sensory workshop prepared by FMK students.     We look forward to seeing you at the opening on 13 March 2019 at 18:00.