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 document is a close-up shot of two matchboxes placed side by side next to two waste pins. One box reads ‘The Key Safety Match’ and the caption indicates their precious distinct dried flower content. This coupling of everyday utilitarian packaging on the ground amongst weeds and detritus is imbued with a melancholic sobering poetry, particularly since these quasi invisible micro-events occurred in a Soviet era Eastern European society undergoing constant surveillance.
Jiri Kovanda was born in 1953 in Prague, Czech Republic. He lives and works in Prague.
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...
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...
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...
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...
Untitled (1992) responds to the same principles of an economy of means as the artist’s actions and installations: three empty cardboard boxes which have contained photographic film are piled one on top of the other...