At the beginning of my curatorship at Gallery 17/18, I simply opened my arms to numerous interesting artists, not really knowing what I am diving into. Over the past few years, we have installed many beautiful exhibitions at the gallery, but this time I decided to slightly change my criteria and invited two artists who are very close to me. Not only for what they are doing artistically, but also on a basic, emotional level. When I met Mélanie, we clicked immediately. She is a pleasant, beautiful and free-minded person, full of spirit, really talented and always fun to be with. Back in Prague, many years ago I worked on several occasions with a curator and artist, Pavel Švec, who´s humor and qualities were very similar to Melanie’s. I didn´t have to think twice to put these two people together. And although they never met before, they just immediately started to chat, just like if they knew each other for a lifetime, despite the fact that their artistic practice and general approach to art is very different.
In her large-scale drawings, Mélanie Myers uses colour crayons – a technique fairly known to most of us since our childhood. Her playful, frisky drawings seem to contain fragments of various narratives, just like dreams piled up one on another. The viewer is drawn in and surrounded by a colourful medley of subtle features and elements and only from a certain distance; he or she is capable to see the image in its entirety. There is a real sense of space, pulsation, growth and decay. The drawings are often accompanied by Myers´s objects; in case of this exhibition, her new terrazzos.What at first seems like discreet and unobtrusive pieces of synthetic stone, shows, under a deeper scrutiny, the strength of Myers´s imagination and playfulness and how powerful her quizzical eye is.
A collage cycle by Pavel Švec also opens an inner, dream-like logic and a carefully maintained lack of causality, thus avoiding cognitive understanding. In his recent work, Pavel Švec suggests searching for the meaning of life within some kind of probable evolutionary short-cut of humankind. This is why he presents the labyrinthine existence of humans on planet Earth through scientific illustrations, documentary photographs, and textbook diagrams. Through the use of borrowed comic-book lines, he turns this material into visual commentaries and dramatic fragments. It seems as if the author reaches complete artistic satisfaction when he chances upon an image, which is both realistically possible and absolutely absurd. Švec is capable of being very sarcastic and skeptical, but the core of his vision is not a negation but, rather, indifference. For Švec, civilization manifestations, such as technologicaldevelopment, incessant crisis and the issue of human freedom simply exist in a shadowy realm beyond judgment. The author asks himself: Is it possible to accept human civilization in its seeming absurdity? Should we be worried about civilization or afraid of it? How strong is its expansive confidence and how deep its inner insecurity? How shallow can a person’s satisfaction be in a world, which depresses and worries him?
Pavel Švec (1980) lives and works in Prague. In the years 2002-2008 he studied at Václav Stratil´s studio of intermedia at FAVU in Brno. He authored the animated films Life on Other Planets, 2006, In a Nutshell, 2008, and House of Arts, 2011. Since 2009, he works as an collections manager and curator in various Prague galleries where he collaborates with contemporary artists on many projects (Jiří Švestka Gallery, SVIT, Hunt Kastner, Nevan Contempo, 35m2 Gallery). Between 2012 and 2014, he was head of the Department of Exhibits at the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes in Prague.
Mélanie Myers lives and works in Hull, Québec. She holds a master’s degree in Visual Arts from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (2013), as well as a bachelor’s degree in Art and Design from the Université du Québec en Outaouais (2008). In production, she reconfigures space and describes situations through her installations and drawings. Myers’s process touches on various fields of interest: landscape, reality, layout, and the middle class. Her projects have been supported by the Canada Arts Council, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and exhibited in several Canadian art centres and galleries, including the Galerie UQO, the Forest City Gallery and the Anna Leonowens Gallery. She has completed residencies at the Centre Bang and the Maison Scott-Fairview (2017), and teaches sculpture at Université du Québec en Outaouais.
Pavel Švec
Pavel Švec
Mélanie Myers
Pavel Švec, Mélanie Myers
Pavel Švec
Mélanie Myers
Pavel Švec
Mélanie Myers
Pavel Švec
Mélanie Myers