Jan Durina – Weak Season
#1 min Barbora Mrázková
2. 10. 2024
Jan Durina’s book presents his artistic work to date in a biographical form. The accompanying text, which runs throughout the book, is based on intimate conversations between the author and the curator Barbora Pavliš. It includes visual materials from photographic series and performances and presents his textile works and musical and collaborative projects. The book showcases Durina’s personal experience along with his artistic practice. The author creates various characters and cloaks them in elaborate narratives, telling his story in this way. We follow the artist’s life stages: adolescence, studies, first exhibitions, relationships, and breakups. The onset of mental health problems and the first fabricated personas. Some of them live their social lives on Instagram while others are associated with the turbulent clubbing nightlife. Others deal with the themes of loneliness and corporeality in nature. Visually strong, almost theatrical with
a melancholic mood, the book connects the themes of Durina’s work – exploring one’s own identity, trauma, care, and the path to healing.
Text: Barbora Mrázková
#2 min Fotograf Zone
FOTOGRAF ZONE FESTIVAL 2025 – TALK TOGETHER
The fifteenth edition of the international Fotograf Zone Festival, titled TALK TOGETHER, focuses on language and interpersonal communication in its many forms. This year’s festival will be presented in a condensed ten-day format, running from 3 to 12 October 2025, and will offer audiences new perspectives on how language shapes our relationships, understanding, and conflicts.
#2 min Natalie Drtinová, Dorota Franková
Dorota Franková – Tenderness and Pain of Dorota Franková’s Portraits
In her work, Dorota Franková focuses on portraiture. While the portraits of others tend to be full of tenderness and fragility, her own are captured in exacerbated situations or via manipulated photographs that emphasise the restlessness of the mind.
#1 min Barbora Mrázková
Šejla Kamerić a Aleksandra Vajd – Erotic Revue
#1 min Barbora Mrázková
Rinko Kawauchi – M/E, On this sphere Endlessly interlinking
#1 min Barbora Mrázková
Jakub Jansa – Club of Opportunities, The Garden of Problems
#1 min Barbora Mrázková
Viktor Kopasz – Temporary Objects
#4 min Vojtěch Märc, Barbora Mrázková
Bára Mrázková – Image Search
We see something, we don't exactly know what. We want to find out; we enter the image into the search engine. It finds something, we don't know exactly how, usually more or less the right thing. Image search (or more precisely, reverse image search) will be familiar to most of today's Internet users. For Bára Mrázková, such search engines are creative tools. But for those who are interested in her work, they are a possible lead. What’s at stake is what is in the pictures, what is between them, and what is behind them.
#3 min Barbora Mrázková
ScreenSaverGallery
In its now classic offering of screensavers, Windows 98 offered the growing 3-D pipeline, also known as the Plumber's Nightmare. The pipe appeared in a black void and gradually filled the entire monitor. The recurring motif and monotony of the animation evoked a calming ambience. ScreenSaverGallery, on the other hand, offers a miscellaneous experience and a moment of surprise.