Petr Dub graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno in masters programme at the studio of painting 1, 2, 3 under the guidance of Petr Veselý, Martin Mainer and Petr Kvíčala. He studied Ph.D. programme at Václav Stratil´s studio. The author is known at the Czech art scene for exploring painting space. In the Klamovka Gazebo the installation from the cycle KNOW-HOW is presented. This time there will be a clash between Noam Chomsky, Miroslav Petříček and Ondřej Horák. The hypothetical match will be started by Petříček who loves football and Chomsky who categorically rejects it as an instrument of capitalistic power. Ondřej Horák, who himself is a passionate football player, will be the referee. Football as a collective game which has its own rules but it has no script fascinates not only Miroslav Petříček, but also Petr Dub who sees in football a mirror of art operation. The game is understood as a drama and a fight containing narrative principle common for football, philosophy, and visual art.
Lenka Sýkorová: How would you characterize your production?
PD: I am interested in the movement between the traditional media and the reference to conceptual art. In other words, I fully identify with the ideology of conceptualism, however, at the same time, I don´t believe that the movement has managed to establish aesthetical independency of sensual perception. The purpose of my work lies in rational-intuitive mixture. There are visual experiments based on historical context of painting and search for social status of contemporary art.
LS: Regarding your current exhibition at Klamovka Gazebo, how would you explain it to an ordinary viewer?
PD: Formally, the exhibition works with sound, image and text. Each of the chosen personalities, whose opinions are considered important in social context, represents a medium. Chomsky (international intellectual star) will be represented at the exhibition by textual quotation. Petříček´s – a significant Czech philosopher – ideas will be heard in an already legendary interview on „aesthetics of football“. In the planned installation the two ideological encounters are demonstrated. Their view on football as a social phenomenon on a theoretical level is radically different. To solve this conflict I decided to use Ondřej Horák, who, for a long time, acts upon the Czech art scene as a mediator (or interpreter of contemporary art) for different art groups.
I focused on the parallel between art and football. Football basically works on internationally negotiated game rules, however, in practice, it varies a lot in styles and social contexts. You can play football barefoot in a poor Brazilian favela, or very “scientifically” in the richest German clubs with Ferrari parked at the parking lot of club players. The both areas of human interest display universal systems that should principally be independent of the economics, and socially autonomous, but in social practice it almost never happens. I mainly see the conflict in what the function of contemporary sports and arts should be and to which players on which level of understanding and which audience is it aimed to? I believe that at this moment we find ourselves on the border of a certain historical turning point that is not possible to understand in other way than through a confrontation of political perspectives.