Location: Brno, Czech Republic
Cyklus: Reframed
Technique: acrylic, wood, canvas
Year: 2012
Realization: Petr Dub
Photo documentation: Zdeněk Porcal
Space: Coffee Shop
Architect: Josef Kranz (1928-1929), VELEK ARCHITEKTI (2009)
Special Thanks To: Igor Fajt
An intervention in the interior of the legendary Era Café represents to a symbolic bridge between the prime period of functionalist architecture in Brno and an attempt to eliminate a restrictive approach to art of the present.
We do not perceive the contemporary Era as an empty iconographic architectural work but rather as a successful social model associating professional simplicity and social functionality in a compact entity. On the basis of the call of Studio 19 members The possibility of interaction with the original author’s intention of Josef Kranz, also represents a crucial ideological problem. The selected solution, apart from terms “apo”, “ibu” and “neuro” borrowed from the world of pharmaceutical products, loosely paraphrasing, in particular, the mania of postmodernist affixes introducing the interpretation of the contemporary world and referring to the shape layout of the components used in the selected installation, also respects the original name of Franz’s architectural project: “Die Unie”. In our version, the fusion of architecture, art and the viewer taking into account that we are unable to provide an absolute answer to the essential question how to communicate with the canonical work of art or how to positively abandon the isolation of the contemporary artistic operation. Even so, we believe that preserving the ability to “be an idiot” is currently a privileged, liberating and highly desirable value.