Jana knows or nobody will like me

They threw me out of school because I regularly missed final exams, and now the end of May came around and with the hectic charge of the month I was reminded of exam time once again. It all started with the awarding of the new Tranzit Award. Only the fact that in half a year it would repeat itself again stops me here from calling it the Event of the Year. All the same it was an event most of all because it shed the doubts of the skeptical part of the Czech art scene, earned after the first introductory mega party in Bratislava and lectures in Vienna. And it’s possible that when Tranzit II comes to cinemas, viewers will not complain that the first one was better. It is only up to the organizers whether viewers will perceive the activities of Tranzit as a series of free and loose sequels, or whether the point is a serial whose individual parts fit into each other and graduate towards a surprising end, or maybe the beginning of a new more aggressive serial of series, whose heroes will even be able to solve significant social problems, like, for example, finding a new director of the National Gallery. Anyway, even if it were to remain only a reward for positive merits and visions, I still think it’s a good idea to go and finish my portfolio.
Then came the 3rd Zlín youth salon. With 45 exhibiting artists, it looked as if the salon covered the production of all the youth from Bohemia and Moravia. Nevertheless, the “Youngest” in Veletržní palác did beat it (with 65 exhibitors). When I asked one friend (who didn’t know whether by exhibiting in the National Gallery he would or would not compromise himself) who could possibly exhibit there, he said: everyone, plus some extra. When later in the exposition of the “youngest” I saw even Surůvka’s Christ hanging, the last sentence from grandma’s prayer book occurred to me: Good Lord protect us and keep all evil away. As a concept this exhibition was not different in any way from the Salon, where thanks to the intentional and obvious salon-like lack of concept there appeared much more and much better work. On the other hand, when I saw at the opening of the new gallery Futura the asses of David Černý, it occurred to me that a few more of this kind of huge laminated mounds and Knížák would become by mistake a martyr of shame. If you are an injured wizard, it is sometimes better just to stay at home. But no other gallery is so spacious to stick something so large… so largely laminated to its back walls. Otherwise in Futura everyone exhibited, even though this time it was the older ones. I don’t want to write more here about it, partly because I focused most of all on my tuna salad, but mostly it seems that this exhibition had a certain curatorial intention. And this is after all a social column.
Purely for chronological reasons I have to mention the exhibition at my place in Escort which followed right after Salon, and ended a week before Futura. Because from Prague to Brno is further from Brno to Prague, and the same work is now being exhibited in Futura, I can praise it without looking as if I am trying to score points for my own gallery. The best American political art in the Czech lands! Jan Kotík! The next day in the morning, I ran with a photo on a foam plate, 1 x 1.5 m, for the bus to Bratislava to the exhibition Czechoslovakia. I just had enough money for the bus, I caught it and after a long argument, they even took the photo on board. During the installation I fainted from hunger and when it seemed that nothing could go wrong, I made myself look stupid in front of Mančuska when I asked him if he knows whose awful strings were wound around the nails on the wall. After the Slovak Tranzit prizes were given away, Czech artists were driving back to Prague in teams of 5’s and 6’s. Yesterday I received an SMS from Juraj Dudáš. We got the grant and can get our money back for the journey.
The exhibition Elektrobot in Gallery Home followed. Enlightenment for celebration. And in the End came the Prague Biennial. As always it showed that if you are an artist, you cannot embarrass yourself at a big curatorial exhibition. And if you are a monster curator, even less so. There are always a lot of people around that you can blame.

JanaKalinová

01.01.2003