Dictionary, 2007–2009, diagram, courtesy Grazer Kunstverein

FRAGMENTS OF UTOPIA

The Zbyněk Baladrán exhibition in the Kolín Regional Museum thematises the presence of fragments of utopian thoughts in the current world, be they on an immediately personal or a more general level. The artist‘s work builds on a socio-political commentary of the past. Baladrán reinterprets theses and adjusts them into a contemporary context. In the last five years he has worked predominantly with video, which has an ambiguous character of both reliable proof and subjective experience. The Constructivism tower model (2006) links a system of left-wing Russian avant-garde theories with the concrete material of construction in an absurd combination. One “material” is created by a ray of light from a data projector, which is projecting on the table and fulfils both the basic function of a tower and the signs of a platform of thought. In the video, Baladrán layers open books about constructivism on top of each other, and the direction of the ray is antithetic to the dialectic movement of Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International from the 1920s. Baladrán also used the screenplay and model as a symbol of potential possibilities in his work Slovník (Dictionary), 2007–2009, which is an unending memory of realised and unrealised artistic works, insights and contemplations. The red lines tie together connected and related thoughts, so creating a personal and impalpable structure of the artist‘s world. The expectations and plans of one person co-exist in one room with generalised testimony about things that, though unrealised, still exist somewhere.

– Markéta Kubačáková

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The Constructivism tower model, 2006, video