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Marek Meduna (born 1973 in Prague) is an important artist within the context of Central Europe who works both independently and also as a member of the Rafani Group. His work often touches upon the fundamentals of artistic media, thus pointing to the complexity of human understanding and rules. The given provokes Meduna to interrogate breaches of the given. These deviations subsequently appear in his work as the interconnection of image, shape and location. Meduna’s work is part sculpture, part installation and site-specific,andcontains both texts and images. The result for the viewer is often only partially meaning oriented. Apart from the instructions derived from the captions to the works and the titles of exhibitions, a conceptual understanding is created mainly from the viewer’s interpretation of the metaphorical core of the combinations (spatial, subject matter, linguistic, etc.) which Meduna creates. Sometimes the artist will stipulate new rules for things using strictly logical means (for example the exhibition entitled Program, Jelení Gallery, 2007), though the basis of his art is sensuous and intuitive. Meduna’s experiences and feelings as imprinted in his works reflect the conflict of the subject with a certain dysfunction, with an unexpected feeling of indecision or determination. He creates parallel experiences, compiles image and language. As a result the synthetic unit representing the final work is some times composed of many mutually engaged, retrospectively indecipherable layers.
Certain exhibitions directly interrogate the institution of art and its media (Saturday, ETC Gallery, 2005; Indication, 2006; Blind Men Measure the Elephant, C2C Gallery, 2006; River, Municipal Gallery in Blansko, 2008; Head, Karlin Studios, 2009 and Equilateral Triangle, Meetfactory, 2009), while others relate more to language and speech (Content, AM180 Gallery, 2005; We Didn’t Agree on a Title, NoD Gallery, 2007; Variant, Louvre Gallery, 2007). The way Meduna interposes descriptions of the works into the internal structure of the artistic contents, for instance at the Jan Šerých exhibition (Yes, Old Town Hall, City Gallery Prague, 2009) or in the collective show Material States (Karlin Studios, 2006), forms a special subtext. Meduna also works with the entire gallery as with a fully significan tobject (Improved Model, Limping Effect, NoD Gallery, 2007; The Baffled Fa the rand the Century of the Woman, Atrium, Moravian Gallery, 2008; After Velvet, House of the Golden Ring, City Gallery Prague, 2009).
MAREK MEDUNA, exhibition view – Marek Meduna, Alexander Wolff,SVIT,2011,courtesy of the artist and SVIT, Prague, photo: Martin Polák.
Markéta Kubačáková
