Ján Mančuška (1972-2011) entered the Czech art scene in the second half of the 1990s, along with the members of the bj group (Josef Bolf, Ján Mančuška, Jan Šerých, Tomáš Vaněk). His work in this period echoed Czechoslovak vernacular variants of conceptualism of the 1960s and 1970s (Stano FIlko, Jiří Kovanda and others).
In line with the somewhat older pondělí (monday) group, Mančuška contemplated the principles of visual art from the principles of visual art from the perspective of poststructuralist texts (R. Barthes, J.F. Lyotard, C. Lévi-Strauss) and cultural relativism. Art for him meant involvement in the process of the historical reflection of the language and forms of representation, an opinion that flew in the face of traditionally expressive, surrealist and romanticizing points of departure of Czech and Slovak art.
With the artist's growing international recognition in the first decade of the 20th century, two distinct paths that went on to became staple in Mančuška's work started to emerge. On the one hand, the artist developed the post-conceptual artistic tradition that actively disputes language in the narrative process (language of literature, video, performance, and film), while on the other his interest in communicating existenital, real-life stories escalated. he shuttling between the elements of these two spectrums, teh artificiality of languages and the weight of the shared stories, could be seen as the focal point of Mančuška's artistic expression.
Ján Mančuška strove to create a new ability to communicate in art theory and practice, viewing this need as vital to resolve the discrepancy in art before and after the collapse of the Berlin wall. His opinion, artists from the former eastern europe either subscribed do their national art forms and traditions, or whole-heartedly embraced the language and subjects of international art. The novel approach, as Mančuška put in into pracitce, was to bridge this gap, whether he returned to the history of art avant-gardes ("authentic structures" symposium), invented new forms of wrote essays, he consistently and almost vigorously combined the intrnational perspective with experience connected with a specific place and historical experience (ready-made stories, F. Kafka, J. Hiršal and others).
Mančuška conceived exhibitions as events changeable in space and time. In the Time Story Space exhibition which cities one of his sketches we chose to organise the artworks in a chronological order. The works were selected with regard to the four sequences that took shape around the issues reflected in the exhibition title:
- a series of "non-spectacular" installations (that originated in a negative response to art procedures of the 1990s employing advertising, marketing and the language of the spectacle);
- a space within a text, a text filling up a space through telling found stories;
- arrangement of motion picture in time;
- and finally, theatrical narration of stories subordinated to the manipulation with disintegrated time.
In addition, visitors will find at the exhibition drawings, studies and materials from the observed period that served as sources for the exhibition, as well as secondary didactic apparatus (interviews in the press) filling the study / office of the post-conceptual artist on the threshold of the new millenium.
The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive pictorial catalogue with the artist's writings and theoretical studies produced by the jrpRingier Swiss publishers and tranzit.cz publishers.
The Exhibition has been realized with financial support by the Ministry of Culture.
