Group exhibition – The Red Pill

Exhibiting artists: Lukáš Dřevjaný, Pavel Holeček, Pavel Korbička, Richard Loskot, Ivo Louda, Jan Poš, Petr Pufler, Michal Pustějovský, Tereza Severová, Jiří Suchánek, Karim Tarakji

There is a key scene in the film The Matrix where Morpheus offers Neo the choice between a blue pill and a red pill. The blue represents conformity within an illusory system, while the red pill is a journey beyond the boundaries of safety, a path to knowledge and a challenge to adopt an active stance. Red signifies Neo’s decision and conscious acceptance of the role of shaman, a mediator between worlds. The shaman’s privilege of being able to see beyond the membrane of illusion, to form unexpected connections and to transcend physical laws is redeemed by struggle. All is done in the interest of saving the hope of a natural life. The overlap between so many aspects of the practice of shaman and artist is remarkable, and probably not accidental. When society is confronted daily with the urgency of negative reports of its gradual or well nigh irreversible end, it asks its shaman to save it or at least to offer hope and light. Artists who use light as a technique, meaning or symbol have a similar gift.

Jiří Suchánek creates kinetic light objects that make sound visible. Pavel Korbička uses light to record and mediate intangible movement. Karim Tarakji uses light to define the idea of space. Ivo Louda works with the virtual light of model situations. Richard Loskot uses light as a tool for an awareness of illusion. In his new work Nexus, Michal Pustějovský directs light rays towards unity, synchronicity and security. Petr Pufler / Světlonoš explores light in the depths of stone, and Tereza Severová works with light as the bearer of an image, whose motive is mainly existential concern for the natural world.

The artists on show draw on geometric and physical laws and constructivist tendencies in Czech art, perhaps best mapped by Josef Hlaváček’s legendary exhibition Poetry of Rationality. Through highly precise technological apparatuses, mathematical algorithms, computer codes and mechanisms, they give rise to a pure poetic formula regarding the good nature of the world.