Participation in art symposia, whether at home or abroad, opens up the opportunity for artists to work with non-traditional materials and to expand their artistic repertoire with new means of expression. In addition, each symposium trip has a strong social dimension. It is a platform for meeting with artistic colleagues, a space of creative confrontation, but also a specific situation, thanks to which one can recognize one’s own limits. Working away from the home studio offers new stimuli, but at the same time may set up various pitfalls, such as the risk of increased socialisation (social activities) and the consequent loss of concentration. And it is up to us, the viewers, to then uncover which of the factors prevailed for a given artist, how well the symposium work fits into the broader context of his or her work, and what specific circumstances accompanied the creation of the work.
The exhibition in Museum Kampa presents works created by the sculptor Jan Hendrych (*1936) during his symposium stays. It covers eleven symposia in total – from the Biennale of Spatial Forms in Elbląg, Poland (1965), the International Sculpture Symposium in Metal in Košice, Slovakia, and the legendary Artchemo in Pardubice (1969), to symposia taking place in the post-November 1989 period. Since many of the works from the earliest symposia have not survived, we present them through period photographs and describe them in accompanying texts. Also, in cases of large-scale realisations, we use photo-documentation or replace them with a model.
The display of Jan Hendrych’s works in Museum Kampa is concentrated in the intimate space of the former stables and partly extends to the exterior, specifically to the terrace of the main museum building. There, large-scale works in enamelled metal are installed, which Jan Hendrych made at his latest symposium to attend, the Smalt Art Vítkovice.
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The guest of the exhibition is Adam Velíšek (*1990), a graduate from Hendrych’s studio, who is one of the most progressive artists in terms of ideas and who still works as Hendrych’s assistant and close collaborator. He has contributed to the exhibition with his latest sculpture, Prostor pro rodinu (Family Space, 2023), which combines the artist’s interest in the figure with his typical sense of conceptual shape and unconventional spatial conception.