#pragovka

The art studio complex where I have my studio, Pragovka, is featured in this travel article by Evan Rail in the NY Times… have a look

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/travel/prague-secret-art-abandoned-buildings.html

My exhibition, Naked Ape / Naha opice opens this Thursday, Jan. 4 at Pragovka, Kolbenova 34A, Prague .. starts at 7 pm, 19h.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1899582430071099/

Naked Ape

Painting and video by Lawrence Wells

Dead Orangutans

ink drawing

70 x 50 cm

2017

Skeletons and Candlesticks

petscii conversion with Playscii

‘sfery intimity’ or the spheres of intimacy, managed to create an entire environment in the walls of the pragovka gallery. on the 6th of october 2023, i visited the opening of four exhibitions in the positively unique contemporary art gallery, and the atmosphere that prague-based artist zlata ziborova managed to evoke with her intermedial installation undoubtedly made the biggest impression on me

seriously, i was surprised how moved i was

she uses the implicit dialogue between mediums like photographs, videos, ceramic sculptures and scoby to her advantage when exploring the ideas of bodies, identities, intimacy and sexuality, its like the artefacts are telling you the story themselves

the deep red light i stepped into at the beginning of the vernissage set the scene and interacted perfectly with the profoundly intimate images i was met with. the artist places scoby, the bacteria/yeast culture you use to make kombucha, on ceramic sculptures decorated with real hair, symbolizing the qualities of a body. the scoby can remind one of soft, brittle human skin, which adds to our connectedness to the cultures of bacteria, and the bacteria itself represents the potential of regeneration. zlata ziborova reminds us of our interconnectedness with one another but also of our own corporeality

her painting of cell structures is marked and signed with her genetic code. she creates new muscle fiber, a new body, with a piece of herself. in her work, shes depicting her own body in a kind of post-human message of escaping one’s form and becoming another. by using her hair and menstrual blood, she also manages to escape her form, connecting herself to her artwork, and transcending her body. in many ways, she and the exhibition overlap, she puts herself and her own intimacy out for us to see, and by doing this, she opens a dialogue about the things that we keep hidden. the rooms tone makes us think about our own bodies, our own intimacy, our own secrets, our own brittleness. the area of the gallery becomes a silent debate.

it should not have been the introductory room of the gallery though, i really couldnt be impressed by the other three exhibitions, though the deep time talk did seem like a lot of thought went into it and i did enjoy the motif of a journey, a narrative that could be found in each of the artists pieces. im a big fan of pragovka, i think its one of the better contemporary art galleries in prague and the entire art district that its created deserves its own post at some point

DANGEROUS DISTANCE [NEBEZPEČNÝ ODSTUP], curating a solo exhibition of Eliška Perglerová, Pragovka Gallery, 2021

participating artist: Eliška Perglerová

on display: Pragovka Gallery, Prague, CZ, 19/3–22/4/2021