The exhibition ‘(CON)TEXTS of Ján Mančuška’ presents the work of this leading Czech contemporary artist for the first time ever in Ostrava. Mančuška’s art has won international renown, as reflected in the list of prominent galleries whose collections include his works – the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Meyer Riegger Gallery in Germany, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York. Ostrava’s Gallery of Fine Arts has now joined this list by purchasing two of Mančuška’s works in 2018: I turn towards the corner guided by the walls, and Middle-aged woman.
The curator’s decision to present just these two works at the exhibition was motivated by the knowledge that grasping and understanding Mančuška’s art is a highly demanding process, as well as the fact that displaying these installations in a generous and uncluttered space will make the artistic experience even more intensely powerful. The exhibition does not set out to present Mančuška’s work in its entirety – instead it shows just two manifestations of one of his core creative endeavours, in which he explored texts as a means of artistic expression and communication.
Mančuška’s work with textual formal-ideological artefacts was inspired by conceptual processes in art whose roots reach back to the American art scene of the 1960s. In Mančuška’s view, text as a means of artistic expression and communication represents an ideal tool for working with content without resorting to visual spectacle. The viewer’s attempt to achieve immersion in these textual structures is disturbed by the schematic nature of the reading process to which we are habituated – including the logical progression of content , the linearity of time, the foreseeability of narrative, the changes experienced by participants, and so on. In Mančuška’s work, textual installations do not merely serve as bearers of content; above all they represent open spaces for a broad spectrum of mental variations.
Mančuška’s work with textual formal-ideological artefacts was inspired by conceptual processes in art whose roots reach back to the American art scene of the 1960s. In Mančuška’s view, text as a means of artistic expression and communication represents an ideal tool for working with content without resorting to visual spectacle. The viewer’s attempt to achieve immersion in these textual structures is disturbed by the schematic nature of the reading process to which we are habituated – including the logical progression of content , the linearity of time, the foreseeability of narrative, the changes experienced by participants, and so on. In Mančuška’s work, textual installations do not merely serve as bearers of content; above all they represent open spaces for a broad spectrum of mental variations.

ACQUISITIONS 2018 GVUO:

In 2017 the Czech Ministry of Culture set up an Acquisitions Fund to help galleries purchase art dating from the past half-century. As part of our acquisitions strategy, in 2018 we selected and purchased a group of works by artists who had not previously featured in our collections and who primarily represent the conceptual stream that emerged on the Czech art scene around the turn of the millennium (Josef Bolf, Lukáš Jasanský, Martin Polák, Michal Kalhous, Alena Kotzmannová, Ján Mančuška, Markéta Othová, Pavla Sceranková, Kateřina Šedá, Jan Šerých and Jiří Thýn).

We plan to display these recently acquired works either individually or in collective exhibitions as part of the ‘Acquisitions 2018’ series. This series of events will create an established platform for presenting these artists and their work to the broadest possible public – so the acquisitions will not only benefit the gallery’s collections; they will also bring powerful intangible benefits by enriching the region’s cultural life. We hope that the majority of our newly acquired works will become part of the permanent exhibitions at the planned extension to the House of Art. 

Exhibition Concept:
Jaroslav Michna
Consultant:
Vít Havránek
Texts:
Jaroslav Michna
Architectural design:
Tomáš Svoboda
Graphic design:
Robert V. Novák & Zuzana Burgrová
Translation:
Christopher Hopkinson

Guided tours with the exhibition curator will take place on 7 February and 7 March at 16.30
The patron of the exhibition is Lukáš Curylo, Deputy Governor of the Moravian-Silesian Region.
Purchased with support from the Czech Republic Ministry of Culture.