Everything but the Lie

Chateau Klenová
3. 9. - 31. 10. 2023

Artists: Timur Aloev, Julius Bobke, Štěpán Brož, Bianka Chladek, Theo Ellison, Nschotschi Haslinger, Jakub Hájek & František Hanousek, Klara Jakes, Monika Kováčová, Šimon Sýkora, Peter Wächtler

 
Exhibition curators: Tina Poliačková, Lumír Nykl
Exhibition design: Jakub Hájek & František Hanousek
Graphic design: Šimon Levitner

If jokes could still be taken seriously today, ours might start like this. Several people meet at a castle: an artistic blacksmith, wire-makers, a wanderer above a sea of intoxicating fog, a member of the Schlaraffia humor society, and other characters who didn’t fit onto our brief list, for which we apologize. Of course, we almost forgot the mischievous vampire – after all, those with inside knowledge have long spoken of the zombification of contemporary art. Nevertheless, our fear of revenants is quickly drowned out – there’s apples rolling towards us from somewhere. They want to warm their tattooed flesh by a smoking stove being obligingly stoked by a helpful frog. Around the corner, a feathered being, lost in thought, is shedding silvery tears, and somewhere in the distance marionnettes wrapped in blankets breathe heavily on a bed. And now you ask, “Where’s the joke?” and you’d be right to. Have we been lying to you all this time, and the joke is at your expense? Truth be told, deception is not our only goal; irony should do more than just subversively tear down the boundary between communication and mockery – it should say something that is difficult to present matter-of-factly. Supposedly, there’s important things worth mentioning, but it would appear that precisely these things require a certain detachment. And so we propose that we try to work our way together through this subjective morass. There is no alternative but to come to terms with the fact that essentially all meanings are surrounded by uncertainty. It’s a joke with an open ending. Don’t worry: you’ll have to trust us that it’s about everything but the lie.