KRIŠTOF KINTERA – It won’t be better

Škuc Gallery, 10 Maj – 15 June 2001

You are kindly invited to attend the opening of the It won’t be better exhibition by the Czech artist Krištof Kintera on Thursday, May 10 2001 at 8 p.m. The exhibition is curated by Bojana Piškur.

Krištof Kintera (1973) is one of the most talented artists of the 90s. He has participated at numerous exhibitions: Manifesta 2, Luxembourg 1998, After The Wall, Stockholm, Berlin, Budapest 1999-2000, Plug in City, Salon 3, London 1999, UberlebensKunst, Neuer Berliner Kunstwerein, Berlin 2000, The End of the World, National Gallery Prague, Worthless (Invaluable), Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana 2000. He is also involved with theater and is a co-founder of the NoD space in Prague. He designed the Cafe 9.net Internet Cafe.

The thread of the It won’t be better exhibition are questions. The artist sardonically says: “Questions are important because they make us think. Thinking is important.”
Through this form of slightly annoying communication he reminds us of everyday things (and I am talking about gestures repeated every day, such as opening doors, etc.) which are quiet real, but are at the same time at such a trivial level of reality that they are not of sufficient interest anymore or they are taken for granted; he also reminds us of that our lives are a string of more or less repetitive rituals. The world of small, curious clones from the laboratory of Krištof Kintera is no different. But eventhough the idea of the exhibition might not seem so exciting at first its message is – THERE IS NEVER ANY EXCUSE FOR BEING BORED…OR BORING. Because, as Debord argues, “everyday life is the measure of all things: of the (non) fulfilment of human relations; of the use of lived time; of artistic experimentation; and of revolutionary politics.”

Krištof Kintera presents the following works:Talkmen, Elements, IT and Windows555.

The project and the catalogue are supported by
Embassy of the Czech Republic in Ljubljana
VIPAP Krško
Škoda Avtoimpex, Ljubljana
Ministrstvo za kulturo RS
MOL – Oddelek za kulturo

bp to kk

there is no place like here
(i mean it) (and i like it)
the artist builds small size houses with windows. the windows are screens. each one shows a different story.
but why, you might ask, are these stories interesting for us? we live them every day.
take me, for example: i live in an appartment building. it has 25 appartments. mine has a balcony. i tried to grow vegetables and spices. they dried. my bike was stolen. radio from the old car i drive as well. i don’t talk to my neighbours. i know their routine. they probably know mine. i hear them fight. i see them drunk. things like that. »the most peaceful place on earth«, elias canetti once said, »is among strangers.«
it is not special. sometimes it rains.

so, i tell you this; the stories are interesting because we see our small selves in them. the people in the windows are real. but like in theatre they come and go. leave the rooms. speak. ask questions. send out messages among the audience.
it is theatrum mundi. they praise the everyday routine. wake up-wash-eat-work-eat-watch tv-sleep.
read junk magazines. yellow press. gossip.
junkfood, junkmail. junkspace.
and then at some point ask the invietable question:
what is reality?
“having lost our ability to ask what reality is means having lost our innocence”*
and i read that we are living what has already been lived and reproduced.
and that the border between art and reality has vanished as both have collapsed into the universal simulacrum. aaron betsky says that we assume – or assemble out of the images and artifacts of mass production – an identity, and the continual construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of that personal reality is our life’s work.

so we are the masters of infiltration. simulation. virtual worlds. we create temporary zones. we destroy them. re-create them again. our sense of identity is our relation to these places. yet our ability to locate ourselves is gone. we write scenarios that allow us to act out the roles within our reality. we are never who we really are.

but in the end, as a character in a book says, we are all alone.

it won’t be better.

* piet hut