AMoYA!

I've been to Prague for 3 days and I could see an exhibition like few others. I've never directly seen something like that; I could have heard about, but never found the will to spend money and time to visit. But after seeing only romantic streets and baroque buildings, pleasant shops and charming restaurants I really need something different. I found it exactly 10 steps before Karluv Most (Carlo's Bridge).

 

The exhibition name is Artbanka Museum of Young Art (AMoYA) and it's a strange place where selected artists can freely present their works. The Association, born in 2011, is described as follow: <AMoYA presents its vision to the public by offering a very bold programme taking place in the unique atmosphere of a Baroque palace in the most historical part of Prague, where visitors – floor after floor, room after room – familiarize themselves with the world of contemporary Czech and international art.>

But the most interesting idea is that all the masterpiece are for rent. Just check the website to learn more. Now my review.

The exhibitions wanted to be shocking and disturbing (if I well remember, that was exactly the purpose of the selection we could see). The location is a quite rotten building with a court, in Karlova street.  Half of that is Baroque style and the rest is obtained from a multi-restored working class condo. Just few words on the location: it's an interesting opportunity to see a true old building, not yet ready for a fable book as the rest of Prague tends to be. The Baroque part is made of big rooms, with stinky old tapestry, dirt floors and big stairs. Big lesson of architecture: do the magnificent stone stairs for the aristocratic floors and the wooden and simplest ones for the servants.

In the "newest part", until few years ago full of poor apartments for rent, you can see the empty dwellings filled with (wanna be) art. You should visit this even only to see the spaces: every square foot has a story to tell, and another to guess.

An then the works of art… so much stuff, all together! It was quite confusing and not all the artists' intents were clear or shareable. I'll do what I can starting with a rough classing:

1) "Wanna be famous" (but not too early)

2) "I can get no satisfaction" (sub. "and I try, I try, I try…")

3) "Buona la prima" (see: well done)

1) Here you can find a lot of angry artists trying to express their anxiety and irritation for what's society today.

You can recognize them for the massive use of tags, aerosol colors, graffiti, putrefaction of substances and a certain number of flying penis in search of the Promise Land -no way to find that in that chaos!

2) They try, they try a lot but they can get no satisfaction. I think their problem is the comparison with the world of Fine Arts, from which they come from. They want to reject it, but in the end it seems only an aestethic game, funny but not enough to convince me. Even those quoting more recents artists (quoting our Pietro Manzoni) cannot get farer then their "specific work" (a bad problem if you quote the shit can!).

* extra points for the shit representing little humans trying to get out of the can

 

* extra points for the artwork with wax - but silly and useless position, mere virtuosism

 

* underwear stuff made of mice fur and heads. Whiskers included. Extra points for choosing Chanel.



* Modernity tries to kiss Classicity, but closes the eyes! Superficial kiss.

3) Well done, guys… you got it!

Even if some could result quite annoying, I must approve the followings:

- Mega-Christ hanging on the rings

- Stuffed Rocking horse [even if the artist focused on her sweet dead friend, instead of looking at the classical fight between horse/body and man/spirit and at the fact of reducing the body/horse to a toy] 

- Four big guns crossing their shots [not new idea but well inserted in the romantic location of the courtyard]

- Scary and anguishing carpet covering "something" in a semi-dark room with frightening sounds [not new (see Duchamp) but very perturbing (according to A. Vidler definition)]

- Marble "classical" statue of the ideal today man: chubby and busy at wiping a plate with a kitchen sponge.

 

Once recognized that contemporary society is too often wrong bad and dirty, remembering that for decades everybody has been saying/picturing/drawing/carving/melting this, should' we try to say something new or at least different?

Given the global anxiety in the air as a fact, or we find a (serious) solution for that, or we completely change subject.

ps. we could only see parts A and B, C was closed. Damn!!!