Marie Lukáčová: Magic in a Time of Economic Progress

In the Kostka Gallery, Marie Lukáčová will present a solo exhibition titled Magic in a Time of Economic Progress, with which she continues in her previous politically engaged art projects and activist activities.

Already during her studies, Lukáčová (often in collaboration with the artist Jakub Roček) approached the topic of an ensuing apocalypse brought about by today’s burning crises: the geopolitical situation, hyper-capitalism, ecological threats, or the rule of the macho “stronger sex”.  Her videos, which she often links to comic book drawings and 3D animations, usually operate within scenes of dystopian worlds, resembling post-surrealist visual collages.

Marie Lukáčová sees the faults in the system, and they won’t let her sleep. She adapts them in the narratives of her works, where her frustration and anger are filtered through a highly personal insolent humour and a youthful obstinacy. Faults in the system are also manifested formally: in deformed images, distracting noise, and sharp cuts. Recently, music has come to the forefront of her practice: starting off as background, it has become the primary agent of the narrative, authorial dialogues becoming original songs. Marie is gradually moving towards the field of rap, and with the help of music producers, she is finding her own beat. Her texts take the form of protest songs. Up to now, her voice was best heard in relation to a sharp critique of the hetero-normative setup of contemporary society and gender inequalities, particularly in the context of Czech arts education.

In Magic in a Time of Economic Progress, Marie connects a new music video (“a rap operetta”), with wall paintings and original furniture. This time, she focuses her attention on the world of banks, financial streams, and acquisition funds, so incomprehensible to so many of us. She presents this environment as a mysterious world of charm and magic which accommodates rituals not unlike those of the animal kingdom. “The top bankers’ number one rule is to keep their secret from ordinary people, which is why they strictly maintain their distant expression, appropriate for the frigid movers of the economy,” says Marie about her work.

---

Marie Lukáčová (born 1991) studied painting at FaVU in Brno and the Kunsthochschule in Mainz. She completed her master’s studies at the supermedia studio at UMPRUM in Prague. She was at the birth of the Čtvrtá vlna (Fourth Wave) initiative, which provided a sharp critique of the unjust treatment of female students at art schools and contributed to the debate around and propagation of feminism in the Czech Republic. In 2019, Marie became one of the finalists of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award for young artists under 35. She has a six-month-old son, Eduard.

Artist: Marie Lukáčová
Curator: Eva Riebová
Opening: 14. 2. 2019, 19:00 
Photography: Katarína Hudáčinová, Libor Galia (opening), Tomáš Souček (instalation)
Free entry 

--- 

Opening Hours: 
open daily 13:00–20:00