Tomáš Svoboda
First Person Singular
–
opening 04/10 from 6pm
within WE ARE OPEN / gallery evening in Prague 7
The scenographic installations of Tomáš Svoboda /1974/ betray his work as a film architect. However, the illusion he constructs using sound, text, and stage sets is always incomplete. In his videos, the picture often cuts out, and carefully staged situations lack actors who might act them out. He merely subtitles reality, and creates the story’s dynamics through editing. His works become complete only by interacting directly with an audience. As a result, Svoboda’s film only gets fully going in our heads. Each time, it is a different film, often even a different genre, directed entirely by our free association.
Where he strips cinematic language down to the bone and resigns on its strongest /visual/ component, he often complements the truncated text with installations that meticulously replace reality while shifting and transforming the context of the particular exhibition space. He literally pulls the viewer into the action. Each exhibition by Tomáš Svoboda is thus a perfect, time-limited Gesamtkunstwerk.
Svoboda’s site-specific installation at Galerie Laboratorio is unabashedly egocentric. At its center is the first person singular. Here, “singular” is a fitting description, as it relates not only to the artist, but also to each individual viewer.
According to Freund, man exists in permanent tension with his surroundings. We spend all our lives engaged in a moral struggle between delight and guilt, between individual desire and societal expectations. According to scientists, we focus most intensively on our “I”, our self, during infancy /the Freudian Id/, adolescence, and our mid-life crisis /which is of a different duration for different people/.
Naturally, we can spend all day talking about egoism, i.e., “I-ism”. But here we would be dealing with diagnosis /it is no coincidence that the term egoism is often used to describe artists/ or belief in the peculiar philosophy of radical solipsism, which is based on the idea that the only reality that exists is my consciousness and nothing else.
The central element of the exhibition First Person Singular is a video installation in which Svoboda dryly describes his daily routine. Through this spiritual archeology, he exhumes his own life, submerged in a sea of more or less banal activities. Neutral verbs reveal nothing of the artist’s state of mind. It is an approach similar to lying on the psychoanalyst’s couch: An associative chain of text, unedited by reason, whose pace is adjusted by the patient himself. Emotional ramparts are presented in the form of visual interventions that the artist has purposefully ordered alogically in order to keep his and our analyst on his toes.
Svoboda’s exhibition culminates with an installation on the roof of the Electric Company building that lets the viewer express his own ego to the full, and thus become, if only for a few minutes, an integral part of the exhibition.
The solo project “First Person Singular” includes not only the exhibition in the gallery and the site-specific installation on the roof, but also an art project on the pages of the first issue of Rajón / Art in Your Neighbourhood and Beyond which Laboratorio is publishing in collaboration with the m.odla and Berlinskej Model galleries.
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T o m á š S v o b o d a /1974/
lives and works in Prague /CZ/
Studies
1996–2003 Academy of Fine Arts, Prague
1999 Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste, Karlsruhe /DE/
Selected solo exhibitions
2011 Ciprian Muresan and Tomáš Svoboda, Futura Gallery, Prague
2011 25 words per second, City Gallery, Prague
2011 I don't feel it will end up like this, HIT galeria + amt_project, Bratislava /SK/
2011 The Power of Context, Moravian Gallery, Brno /CZ/
2010 Mrs. Roberts is Gonna Be Late /with Daniel Pitín/, curated by VALIE EXPORT, Galerie Charim, Vienna /AT/
2010 Without Title, Galerie 207, Gallery AAAD, Prague
2009 Exposition, Karlín Studios, Prague
2008 Ivan Kafka and Tomáš Svoboda, Futura Gallery, Prague
2008 Das Fenster zum Hof, Galerie Antje Wachs, Berlin /DE/
2008 The Roof, „36“ Gallery, Olomouc /CZ/
2006 Déja-vu, G99, Brno
2006 Partners in Crime /with Robert Bárta/, raum500, Munich /DE/
2005 Privat, A.M.180 gallery, Prague
2005 Výstava / Exhibition, Galerie Doubner, Prague
2005 Srdečné blahopřání / Heartfelt Congratulations, etc. galerie, Prague
2004 City tunes, Stadtgalerie Bern /CH/
2003 Leta jako Superman, Galerie 761, Ostrava /CZ/
2003 On the Road, Galerie Na bidylku, Brno
2003 No Exit, Galerie NSCU, Galerie Jeleni, Prague / Stuttgarter Kunstverein e.V. 22, Stuttgart /DE/
Selected group exhibitions
2012 The Islands of Resistance, Between the First and Second Modernity 1985 —2012, National Gallery, Prague
2012 Beginning of the Century – Czech Art of the 1st decennium of 21st Century, Západočeská galerie, Pilsen /CZ/
2012 Prison:No Limits for Art, Moravian gallery, Brno / DOX – Centre for Contemporary Art, Prague
2011 Erotic revue, GASK, Kutná Hora /CZ/
2011 Whose city is this? Karlín studios, Prague
2011 The Prague Biennale 5, Prague
2011 Intersection, Prague Quadrennial, Prague
2011 Sommer auf dem Balkon, Galerie Antje Wachs, Berlin /DE/
2011 Les amis de mes amis sont mes amis, hommage à Ján Mančuška. Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris/FR/
2011 Additional links, NTK Gallery, Prague
2010 Economy of Unwanted Amity, Karlín studios, Prague
2010 Demonstration of a Space, Street for Art Festival, Prague
2010 One Day You Will Lose It All, Four Days in Motion Festival, Prague
2009 Monument to Transformation, City Gallery, Prague
2009 The Prague Biennale 4, Prague
2009 After Velvet - Czech Art of the Last 20 Years, City Gallery, Prague
2008 Videoart.cz, Space Gallery, Bratislava /SK/
2008 Contemporary Czech Cubism, City Gallery, Prague
2008 Zwischenstand, Wuertembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart /DE/
2008 InVisible, Festival of Photography, Olomouc /CZ/
2008 Cargo, Czech video festival, Budapest /HU/, Bucharest /RO/
2008 Manual, projekt, Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw /PL/
2008 10+10, Galerie Klatovy/Klenová /CZ/
2008 Jeder Mensch ist ein Künstler, Spor Klübü Galerie, Berlin /DE/
2007 Territorien, Galerie der Künstler, München, /DE/
2007 Gross Domestic Product, City Gallery, Prague
2007 It stays between us, Karlin studios, Prague / M’ars Gallery, Moscow /RU/
2007 Beauty Farm, Neue Kunst im Hagenbucher, Heilbronn /DE/
2006 Indikace, 4+4+4 Days in Motion, Prague
2006 Odlet / Departure, Low-cost Generation, Czech Centres, Prague
2006 In the Neighbourhood, De Veemvloer, Amsterdam /NL/
2005 1811197604122005, Galeria Plan B, Cluj /RO/
2004 Sputniza, Kunsthaus Dresden /DE/
2004 Space Kemp, Kolowratský palác, Prague
2004 Breakthrough, Den Haag /NL/
2003 Paradies, Bunker am Alexanderplatz, Berlin
2003 Art Cubicle, Galerie und Projekte Raum, Berlin / Galerie Home, Prague
2003 Zlín Youth Salon, Regional Gallery of Fine Arts, Zlín /CZ/
2002 Czech Season, Palais de Tokyo, Paris /FR/
2002 Wechselstube, Galerie Oberwelt, Stuttgart /DE/
2001 Criss/Cross, Galeria Piwnica, Wroclaw /PL/
since 2007 tranzitdisplay.cz, Prague / member of the board
2001–2007 Display Gallery, Prague / co-founder and co-curator
