08 Jan 2009

Ateliér Josef Sudek Presents: Wiener Wurst, Mirek and Nature Took It Out on Him

WIENER WURST
MIREK
NATURE TOOK IT OUT ON HIM

participating artists: Jana Kochánková, Marek Ther, Ondřej Brody

'We were born as women, but we can choose the male gender, or a flower, or the sea…many things.'
Julia Kristeva (from an interview for the magazine Respekt - respekt.cz)

Even though Jana Kochánková, Marek Ther and Ondřej Brody are united by a years of friendship and joint academic experience, the style of each individual differs tremendously. While in reference to Ondřej's projects we most frequently observe the characteristics 'provocative, incorrect, tabooed, repulsive…'. Mark's work brings 'transgender, fetishistic, instinctive, refined and unique' to the game. The properties of Jana's work then crash in like a bolt of lightening out of nowhere: 'playful, childish and feminine, creative, impulsive, brutally naive.' Their 'mass effect' within the scope of the exhibition in JS Atelier can then at least be defined from the curator's point of view as exhilarating in a serene way. Erotically tinged sagacity is clearly a quality as well, which has played with each one of them.

Three photographic cycles, which the authors exhibit at JS Atelier, have two other elements in common apart from the aforementioned, hidden humour. Primarily the topic of sexuality, gender identity and genealogy of their 'operations'. While Jana dresses as a man 'N.Y. XXL' in the series Mirek and tried to be in his hot pants for at least a little while in the series Nature took it out on him, her colleagues Ondřej and Mark document the detection of an unidentifiable, however, clearly civil and resigned being, relaxing under Barrandov film studios. The story Viener Wurst differs mainly due to its action, yet bourgeois taste, which causes a relatively long description of peripetia.

The exhibition is formed by 34 shots installed in an even, very densely divided row, in which individual series flow smoothly from one to another. All photographs are the same size and are independently adjusted into a network of red frames. In the Jana-Mark-Ondřej trio, the hype no longer deals with 'romantic dreams about gender' but simply multi-voiced sexuality.

Helena Blašková