The Portent of Light

Curators: Jaro Varga, Lucia Tkáčová
Opening: 14. 4. 2016, 19:30
Exhibition duration: 14. 4.- 31. 5. 2016
Artists: Caroline Achaintre, Agnieszka Brzeżańska, Dominik Císař, Mark Fridvalszki, Maria Loboda, Milan Mikuláštík, Shana Moulton

The show, titled “The Portent of Light” is inspired by the oeuvre of Ludvík Souček (1926-1978), an excellent sci-fi writer and a unique occurrence on the literary scene of former socialist Czechoslovakia. Souček was a life-long passionate chronicler of ancient histories, a scout of vanished civilizations, and an enthusiast in unorthodox archaeology, exobiology, cosmology and alchemy. On the day of Souček's death, his last manuscript mysteriously disappeared from the publishing house. These circumstances are a skeleton, a springboard, a thread to be spun further within the exhibition.
“The Portent of Light” wants to pursue the enticing phenomenon of “lost knowledge”. It follows the comet/fantasy of highly advanced civilizations that vanished in the murkiness of oblivion and explores how the heritage of ancient wisdom seeps into the current thinking and resonates in the contemporary art practice. 
The exhibition is composed of artworks that have the potential to be the mediums of this wisdom, sensitive membranes that catch the light of the perished cultures, channels of the hyper-advanced consciousness. It unfolds along the lines of “realisme fantastique” and builds an arch between the ancient and the sci-fi world, between the forgotten and the yet-to-be-imagined, the terrestrial and cosmic, things that might have been and the what-ifs....