Domestic Matter
Exhibition: April 2nd – May 8th
Opening: April 2nd at 6 pm
Guided tour: Lenka Klodová, Barbara Benish (photos here)
Performance by: Lenka Klodová
Musical performance by: Gabra a harmonikář
Opening words: Mgr. Karel Zrůbek
Artists: Barbara Benish (USA/CZ), Lenka Klodová (CZ), Karin Bolonder (USA), Cristina Corso (Columbie), students from Bohemian Workshop 2011
Openning hours: Fri – Sun, 10 am – 4 pm
The domestic sphere has traditionally been the radius of the woman's life, and in many cultures this is still true. She is the fulcrum that shops, cooks, cleans, bears and raises children. The English word "matter" refers to physical, chemical presence. But is also implies something that 'cares', that "matters", that has value or importance. What are the objects in the home that have value? Are they tangible? Domesticity can be comfort or prison, depending on the situation for the woman and all other family members. Each of the artists in this exhibit looks at objects of domesticity and/or ways of life, laden with contamination, toxins or pollutants. But all question and confront the viewer with a challenge: What matters in our domestic castles or the home of our bodies? Milk, plastic, a potted plant- the everyday that turns sublime.
Karin Bolender (USA)
R.A.W. AssMilk Soap – a collaborative matrix of Equus asinus, Homo sapiens, and the transformative processes of milksoap -making and imagination, Karin Bolender's "AssMilk Soap" installation recreates a tableau of rural domesticity.
As a durational, place-based performance, R.A.W. AssMilk Soap has evolved from a fascination with the way milk is linked to ecological place; for instance, livestock breeders know that one should never move a pregnant animal from her pasture right before she gives birth, because her thick first milk—known as colostrums— contains antibodies to the specific pathogens where she has been gestating. So the milk, in that sense, is made of the place, of everything the mother body eats and breathes as she feeds the growing fetus and eventually the newborn. Borrowing the French tradition of savon au lait d’anesse (assmilk soap), R.A.W. Assmilk Soap embodies this metaphor of milk~place nexus in a process of saponification, whereby milk from her -ass companions (Aliass, Rose, and Passenger) is transformed and contained in special bars of soap. As collaboration, R.A.W. Assmilk Soap invites human participants to contribute physical ingredients that signify a specific place or way of life – anything from fur and fragments of bones or a bird’s nests to drops of oil and blood – for their own unique bar of Assmilk Soap. With this double-barreled, imaginative cleansing power, R.A.W. Assmilk Soap aims toward the many stains – whether visible or hidden – that pollute our bodies and our homelands
Barbara Benish (CZ/USA)
The installation Ubiquity (2011) offers elements of machined crisp edges, man-made in a swirling complex column of white plastic chairs stacked bottom to bottom and top to top. Within these strands exist video monitors and mirrors that show and reflect video of various bodies of water, each with bits of plastic or other detritus floating about. The twisting strand of white chairs suggests an unending tower reminiscent of Brancusi. The twisting column, teaming with movement and life from the video, offers a DNA-like metaphor for the earth’s aquatic ecosystems. Here, engrained within these symbolic building blocks of healthy life, are inorganic elements, plastic bits. The video images are at odds with the chairs that contain them. The water seems contained, trapped, encapsulated and reorganized within this contemporary structure. We might entertain a positive symbiotic relationship were it not for the images themselves. The plastic has infiltrated water itself. Where water is ultimately mobile, changing from solid to liquid to gas with relatively slight changes in temperature, the plastic rejects decomposition, movement, and, like the chairs that contain the video, conjures a world in stasis.
(text by Mark Cervenka, Curator: University of Houston, Downtown, USA)
Cristina Corso (Columbia)
Cristina Corso created this series of works while a graduate student at New York University studying at ArtMill's Bohemian Workshops summer study abroad program in 2009. They visually document life around the mill and in Prague, particularly the Czech fascination with house plants. We experience the lushness of home decoration and female self-expression via carefully placed potted plants, seen through the eyes of this young South American artist. The plants are a cleansing air-filter, an aesthetic eye-pleaser and a maintainer of human bio-rhythms. "These images are not about photography; they are about private moments."
Lenka Klodová (CZ)
Czech artist Lenka Klodová presents two installations: “Souvenirs” and “Disposition” based on the Domestic Matter theme- meaning "home is important, and household counts" . After asking her friends to fill in a map of their homes, marking an ‘X’ on the places where they have made love, Klodova then re-creates the household plans across the gallery walls, floors, and ceilings. “It was if I was starting a new form of erotic drawing or literature”, the artist says. Intimate information is worked into an authentic de-estheticized form. Only marks and stamps, which of themselves hide lovely intimate memories and experiences, which now provoke imagination, supported by the intimate experiences of the viewer. Hidden voyeurism is placed as the main thought of the viewer. The artist wants to make body’s experience into a life-size drawn floorplan. “Souvenirs” is an installation of plaster casts, taken from the artist’s life performance in the gallery, while urinating.
Artist Books from the ArtMill Bohemian Workshops, 2011
An exhibition of a common work of the students of Bohemian Workshop in 2011. The two week programme for art students took place at ArtMill near Horažďovice.
The programmes are multicultural – various nationalities, cultures and philosophies meet here. Last year alumnus come from Turkey, Norway, Switzerland, Spain and Czech Republic. Besides the Artist Books the visitors can watch a film, created by Alex Katis together with the BOHO Workshop students.
Students from the local Arts High School in Horazdovice visited Galerie Califia for a tour of the exhibition.
Gabra a harmonikář
Songs of "Gabra a harmonikář" (Gabra and the accordionist) were created many years ago as rock, absolutely unlistenable songs of the group "Wimp".
H then met Gabra, who had been living in completely different music spheres until that time, and the rest is history.
"Gabra a harmonikář" was created, mixing the accordion's directness and Gabra´s emotionality.
Photogallery from the opening
