Group exhibition – OSM

Eight different approaches, forms, moods, experiences, statements. Eight distinctive solitary authors who complement each other are both conscious and indirect inspiration. A network of functioning visual relationships in space, which relativize the principle of downward transmission of experience in time. Again, there is no coincidence.

Curator: Klára Voskovcová, Blanka Čermáková

This year, the 110th anniversary of the establishment of March 8 as International Women's Day, the number OSM has become the fundamental key to be able to define such a general purpose as an exhibition of "women's art". We looked at OSM from different perspectives in order to finally create two imaginary fours and four pairs and combine them into an exhibition whole. In the end, we placed the figure eight to symbolically pay tribute to those whose names have fallen into oblivion, if they were ever on the way in the opposite direction. Due to the limited time for preparation, we did not dare to go deep into the caves, similarly to a show of respect with a gender mark. On the contrary, when creating the EIGHT-member exhibition, we wanted to proceed as freely as possible when one simply cancels the category of "women's art". And yet they ONLY expose women.

Is there an "element, motif, theme" that our OSM share? Is there something that connects such strong and different solitary female authors and that could only concern women / the feminine side of their work?

The OSM exhibition is built on a visual play with a variety of artistic manuscripts. We have connected the distinctive works of individual artists who each move in a different artistic position, and yet their visual language can be combined. Tereza Fišerová, one of the youngest participants, as a representative of video art, Anna Hulačová in terms of sculpture and plastic work with matter, Alžběta Josefy, a painter of enchanting themes, Alena Kotzmannová as the only one in the category of photography, who naturally cancels each of her works, Pavlína Kvita, on the border between sculpture and object, Dana Sahánková in the role of a supreme draughtsman, Pavla Sceranková, an unclassifiable creator of kinetic installations, objects, and videos, and the legendary draughtsman, Jitka Svobodová, subduing the classical perception of the object world on a drawing level.

All authors from OSM touch on elements of everyday life – they include furniture, home space, memory, folk decor, natural objects, etc. The details of everyday life assemble other facts in a chain. But that's what art does regardless of gender and has always been. Perhaps the truth is that for a woman artist, work is with the immediate

and everyday surroundings more natural, more usual than for men. Let's leave aside the reasons why this is so.

Graphic visual: Helena Šantavá