gb agency

Czech Centre Tokyo and Aoyama Meguro are pleased to announce that we are simultaneously holding two solo exhibitions of a Prague-based artist Jiri Kovanda (born 1953) for the first time in Japan.

Kovanda is a self-taught artist and started his career in the middle of the 1970s with no private studio.During the period, he carried out self-effacing style of actions in crowd, street, public spaces and etc. in Prague; they were documented through black and white photos and compiled into leaflets along with simple scenario (on what to do and how to do it). Actually, these inconspicuous actions were intended to spread their effect to urban space in an undisturbed manner.

These performances include “Untitled (On an escalator … turning around, I look into the eyes of the person standing behind me …), September 3, 1977,” “Untitled (I’m crying. I gazed at the sun for so long that I have started to cry.), 1977,” and “I take some water from the river in my cupped hands and release it a few metres down the river, May 11, 1976, Strelecky Island, Prague.” Presumably, under the social circumstances at that time, he neither put an emphasis on introducing his activity to many people as “work of art,” nor on making himself popular.

To learn more, follow the link.