In anthropology, “liminality” is the transition state between two worlds. Promenade is characteristic of a view from the street into a gallery and vice versa. A window is linked with the concept “border”, separating the space of an institution from the rest of the city. As with the Carrollʼs looking-glass, it reveals a seemingly identical world which, however, appears as an inversion of the real one. Through the view from the street, one can thus see the urban environment which is similar to the one where we presently are. Only subsequent association allows us to reflect on what we really see.
The exhibition “Retro-reflection” is a newly created environment – a parallel to the artistʼs excursions of the city. He symbolically relates to them via the system of traffic signs. He is an embodiment of a man passing through the urban landscape and an iconic depiction of his routes. Artefacts are abstracted maps and relics of long-term interventions, documentations retrospectively set into particular space-time coordinates. At the same time, the central work physically remains outside the gallery, although the entire exhibition is related to it. Another artefact receives its form by continuous replacing material from the gallery with material taken from the street. The guerrilla methods are simultaneously conditioned by the mutual permeability between the institution and the street and by their vital mutual relations.
Epos 257 graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and works with the urban environment and urban iconography. His works explore the public space and its general utilization and react to the disputed border between what is public and what is not. He develops a dialogue with a city as a medium. Formerly pursuing graffiti, he composes his works into complexly elaborated contexts by which he often touches upon social subjects.
Curated by: Jiří Ptáček and František Teplý
