BARBORA BÁLKOVÁ

FROM NOWHERE TO NOWHERE

4. 5. – 10. 5. 2015

Barbora Balkova (1978, AVU Prague, art studio of Veronika Bromova) in her art work moves freely between photography, art objects and painting. The „From Nowhere To Nowhere“ exhibition is featuring her newest mechanic-acoustic object. It is a kinetic installation consisting of a spinning platform in the form of a miniature running track. On an imaginary race course we see statues of despotic leaders who by their actions affected the course of the past century, impacting thus lives of millions of people. First the manipulators, now they are becoming pawns on the board themselves.
The artist rendered the dictators as rocking horses with typical horse-riding attributes, a saddle, a bridle, shackles, and placed them on a round platform into the running tracks. Hitler, Mao Zedong, Stalin and Kim Jong-un thus move on and on, just like the rocking horses move nonsensically around on a carousel.
In this context they become manipulated figures themselves who, by their embarrassing positions, beg the viewer to be subjugated to his/her will, to play with them or simply to demonstrate the line of a good taste related to any manipulation of people.
The installation is completed by a thirteen minutes long sound loop compiling human voices, in which on the backdrop of a sport event we can recognise a life story of an individual. On a „playground“ thus an individual life permeates the context of history. The spinning platform, moved by electric engine, is 3m in diameter, the hyper-realistic statues are life-size. The opening will be accompanied by ambient music performance by Patrik Pelauch and his trumpet. The show is supported by Raiffeisen Bank. www.barborabalkova.cz