Part of the Michal Ranný Prize, awarded bi-annually by the Friends of the Moravian Gallery Society and the Moravian Gallery in Brno, is an exhibition featuring the winning artist. This year's winner is Jiří Kovanda, chosen by a specialist jury in accordance with the conditions associated with the Michal Ranný Prize, taking into particular account that his impact on the younger generation of artists has been considered the strongest and most enduring. His work finds a broad response among those dedicated to post-conceptual art as well as among all who appreciate that unique aspect of his work which inconspicuously (although to highly sophisticated final effect) reflects and actively interprets various aspects of everyday reality. Kovanda has found a permanent niche that lies beyond the established structures of visual art. Paradoxically enough, this may account for the fact that his work may be considered among the most inspirational impulses in modern Czech visual culture. Jiří Kovanda was born on 1 May 1953 in Prague. He is a self-taught artist, and works as lecturer at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of Vladimír Skrepl, a position he has held since 1995. Kovanda's artistic beginnings were associated with collages (1972-73), close to the poetics of surrealism. In 1976-82 he produced a series of events ("actions"), object interventions and installations in which he explored what lay behind manipulated situations, shifting and slightly altering the meaning of the mundane. The actions, in which the artist attacked the very border separating the sphere of art and activities beyond it, were based on his personal interference in the public space of the city. He employed somewhat inconspicuous physical and mental techniques, gestures and objects (for example, the Contact action consisted in his apparently non-deliberate bumping into people walking in the opposite direction). The actions eventually gave way to the creation of objects, drawings, collages and paintings (since the 1980's). Kovanda's paintings, drawings, installations and object interventions frequently paraphrase the formal procedures of avant-gardes and pose ironic polemics with ingrained stereotypes of the world of art (cycles containing references to the sphere of geometrical and minimalist art, citing the handwriting of different art styles, adopting the shape of "banal" illustrations, etc.). With objects, the artist employs the principle of manipulated ready-mades: he works with a selfcontained, often "found" material, to which he imparts slight changes. These simple combinations generate a deliberate minimal effect. (In the Fur action, 1982, he put a plush cover at the end of a railing, in the spirit of the surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim; the Sugar Tower object from 1981 may be viewed as an ironical paraphrase of minimalist art, with its exclusivity shifted to the realm of everyday reality.) In the 1990's, Kovanda made a mark upon Czech art with his small hanging objects made of used pieces of furniture. For the major show "I'm Not Against" in the House of the Lords of Kunštát, Brno, he produced objects from the material found in the gallery storeroom. Kovanda's contemporary oeuvre features, among others, familiar objects occasionally endowed with erotic morphology, and consumer goods in which the artist employs a certain surreal effect, often derived from inappropriate combinations of materials (the Wall / Biscuits installation). Kovanda's art has recently found the spotlight abroad, and his works have started to appear in numerous international shows throughout Europe. The artist has also had a great many exhibitions in the Czech Republic. Jiří Kovanda is represented in a large number of private and state collections (e.g. Museum moderner Kunst, Vienna; Sammlung der Erste Bank-Gruppe, Vienna). The current show in the Moravian Gallery in Brno, held in collaboration with the Brno art collector Karel Tutsch and associated with the award of the Michal Ranný Prize, presents a selection from the artist's oeuvre.
