A series of tests for decoding

Markéta Kinterová’s exhibition is the last project of our gallery in 2017. It concludes our year-long programme dedicated to arts PhD students while simultaneously opening our next year’s programme – series of exhibitions focused on young art teachers. Kinterová falls into both of these categories, being a PhD student at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM) while teaching at the Film and TV faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU). Her long-term interest in the questions of public space is being further explored in the project created for Entrance Gallery.

Markéta’s strolling through a city serves as a metaphor for reading. The city becomes an imaginary magazine. Its pages can be turned sometimes slowly, then quickly, chaotically and then again in a more structured way. The reading is not linear as the magazine allows us to flip through its pages, skip the whole articles and shift our focus according to the current situation, mood or personal inclinations.

Having sat down in a city, Markéta watches herself to see if anything changed by her action. She wants to find out if her perception has changed and if the city accepts her as such. She sees an urban landscape as a living organism. In his relation to the city one has to take into account various ergonomic criteria – those optimizing one’s movement in it or creating hazard-free working environment. For the ergonomics to work, one has to become an integral technological component of the city.

And then Markéta lies down, leaving us uncertain about her own feelings of inappropriateness of this gesture. Instead, she invites us to at least imagine such situation or touch it with our own hands.

model of a city through which we can wander in a predetermined way. The streets and houses serve as a guidance for our views of the city. Unlike the real cityscapes, they’re free from any visual smog. Infinite rolls of billboards-printing paper are possibly waiting to be printed upon. Or maybe they don’t need any determining definition, as we can only see the reverse side of the paper. Markéta invites us to watch and read the city through her eyes and although (or perhaps because) she leaves the point open, the focus is shifted to our own reading.