29,7 x 21,3 cm
Kovanda’s street interventions are always documented according to the same format as the actions: a piece of A4 paper, a typewritten text giving a precise location and date, and a photograph. Contrarily to the actions, he took the photographs himself. One of the rules he stuck to in his artistic practice was to always use material at his disposal, a real economy of means. Since he worked in the Prague National Gallery store between 1977 and 1995, he was able to use left-over art handling materials like string, paper, wooden wedges and so forth. Most interventions tended to be small in scale and ephemeral, with no particular audience since they occurred outside the art gallery space (certainly until the late 1990s). This was perhaps a ironic counter-commentary on monumental Minimalist installations and a consequence of the context of an Eastern European country during the Soviet period. In this document, wooden wedges are inserted in the interstices of stone pavings, as if standing guard. Stuck in an ominous corner, they create stark shadows on the ground.
Jiri Kovanda was born in 1953 in Prague, Czech Republic. He lives and works in Prague.
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Kovanda’s ‘discreet’ actions (leaving a discussion in a rush, bumping into passers-by in the street, making a pile of rubbish and scattering it, looking at the sun until tears come…) are always documented according to the same format: a piece of A4 paper, a concise typewritten text, and sometimes a photograph taken by someone else...
Kovanda’s street interventions are always documented according to the same format as the actions: a piece of A4 paper, a typewritten text giving a precise location and date, and a photograph...
This ephemeral installation by Jirí Kovanda, documented in the same way as his performances with a photograph and a text, belongs to a body of works that took place in his apartment/studio...
Temps Mort is the result of one year of mobile phone exchanges of still images and videos between the artist and a person incarcerated in prison...