The 5KV exhibition on the overlap between art and design is the symbolic culmination of five years of the Kvalitář Gallery’s work, which focuses on both disciplines. The idea of how to conceptualize this simple, albeit long-problematic topic arose along with an awareness of a growing interest in artistic production and certain aspects of artisan and designer practice related to the nature of individual artworks, as well as the current development of artistic tendencies in the environment of applied art.
From a historical perspective, a close relationship between these two fields of visual culture is nothing exceptional. Both fields, over the course of history, have mutually augmented each other, inspired each other and functioned in parallel, whether we think of the interior of a medieval Gothic cathedral, a Baroque church, the projects of the Viennese Secession, the workshops of the Bauhaus school of art, the environment of the postwar Italian avant-garde or the Pop Art movement. In today’s post-medium era, however, even though the mediums in which they work are approximating each other more and more, these fields are developing separately, despite the fact that they exploit similar principles and strategies. There is an absence of deeper contact and exchange of opinion between them, both in practice and in theory. The 5KV exhibition should, among other matters, be able to introduce into the Czech environment a certain discussion and to connect these different scenes, at least while the exhibition is open. Especially in the local environment these fields have ended up working in absolutely separate operational and theoretical contexts.
In the applied art environment more and more experiments are underway with artistic forms, and applied artists are frequently all but crossing into freeform artistic expression; in their works they are relating to similar questions or reflections about our society as those addressed by fine artists. Art itself, on the other hand, is working more and more frequently with new technologies, typologies, or purely formal principles that are closer to applied art. From the standpoint of our awareness of the history of artistic disciplines, however, the relationship of fine art toward applied art has long been considered problematic, and design per se has taken on a pejorative connotation for some artists and critics. Design, for them, means a structure that can be artistically convincing but that does not stand alone as art. Out of a concern that their works will be contextualized as design, artists have hidden their engagements in that direction; we find many such examples in the history of fine art. On the other hand, as we have noted above, some artistic directions during the 20th century fully appropriated an engagement with design.
We can follow this development in relation to the physical forms of the various pieces. In this exhibition, that development is demonstrated by works in which functionality and utility are emphasized; the pieces are transposed into the real world, or exist in the form of a speculative project offering an imaginary but allegedly beneficial service (Jakub Jansa, Thomas Traum). Some artists are turning in their works to the history of design, and the main theme is becoming the reinterpretation of selected iconic pieces (Edgar Orlaineta, Shawn Maximo, Toilet Paper). Art projects are also being created that borrow the aesthetic, technology or typology of applied art (Federico Díaz, Romana Drdová, Olafur Eliasson, Sarah Crowner, Nik Timková). These are works that investigate materials – their physical characteristics and formal aspects such as structure and surface – inter alia either as the consequence of an interest in handicrafts and manufactured appearances, or, on the other hand, an interest in the use of postindustrial technologies and prefabricated materials. Another group of works are those of designers whose critical scope and ideas touch on fine art and, for example, even some contemporary art trends (Robert Stadler, Sabine Marcelis, Fredrik Paulsen, Martino Gamper, Atelier Biagetti). The growing importance of social responsibility is manifested in the transformation of customary forms of design into new media in the form of video and performance (Studio Swine, Fernando Laposse, Zeitguised). Last but not least, artists are appearing who work with art and design simultaneously and seek in their specific projects an ideal place for their expressions (Arik Levy, Tadeáš Podracký, Hilda Hellström, Jakub Berdych Karpelis).
The exhibition is divided into two parts; the first represents the above-mentioned contemporary works by domestic and international artists who, in various ways, touch on both disciplines, whether from a theoretical perspective, a visual perspective, or from the perspective of how both branches of visual culture function. The second part of the exhibition is then dedicated to a specific example from history demonstrating an instance of the actual overlap of both disciplines, namely, a dialogue between the oeuvres of the Italian designer Alessandro Mendini and the Czech artist Milan Knížák.
The 5KV exhibition takes issue with the currently sharply delineated borders between art and design and their detachment from one another. It does not attempt to judge anything, but just describes this reality through specific exemplars from both fields, offering a topic for further discussion on the basis of these diverse examples, which represent the many ways design and fine art overlap in today’s artistic output.
Text by Monika Čejková and Adam Štěch
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Against the backdrop of this issue on the overlap between art and design, the visual style of the exhibition has been designed so as to remind viewers of a “brand”, and a limited edition of products has been produced – T-shirts, a baseball cap, a mobile phone cover, a bomber jacket, raincoats and a vase – by some of the exhibiting artists and designers as well as the curator of the exhibition and the graphic designer.
The text was published in 5KV catalogue.
Exhibiting artists and designers:
Atelier Biagetti, Jakub Berdych Karpelis, Sarah Crowner, Federico Díaz, Romana Drdová, Olafur Eliasson & Frederik Ottesen, Martino Gamper, Hilda Hellström, Jakub Jansa, Milan Knížák, Fernando Laposse, Arik Levy, Sabine Marcelis, Shawn Maximo, Alessandro Mendini, Edgar Orlaineta, Toilet Paper, Fredrik Paulsen, Tadeáš Podracký, Robert Stadler, Studio Swine, Nik Timková, Thomas Traum, Zeitguised & Daniel Hundsdörfer
Curators:
Monika Čejková, Adam Štěch
Full exhibition documentation
6/10–22/11 2017, Kvalitář Gallery, Prague – Czech Rep.