ARTIST STATEMENT

In our artistic practise we continuously focus on installation, which sometimes transcends into something like site specific scenography. These landscapes we create are accompanied by our statues, objects and moving image, as we found a great interest in a traditional puppet stop motion animation. Our work balance on the edge of abstract and figurative as it is creating a scene for our characters rising out of psychedelic dream. Through this mix of media we are seeking the important moment in our work, which is the magic, the inner world of individual pieces and the intimate moment on the backdrop of the landscape, which communicates closely with the audience and is trying to create a free space of emotion and therapeutic experience. This way of practise helps us to create a space for materializing the ideas and themes that surround us and are crucial and pressing  as much as the everyday life in a global civilization can be.

Our main theme is realization that under the layer of discourse, there is another, often neglected, layer which is becoming essential to us. We believe that the tradition of art as rational and logical effort is failing, and often becomes a mere network of references, which leads to detachment. With the requirement of creating rational context, both creation process and outcome lose the factor of deep aesthetic experience. With that said, we also avoid the trap of formalism or neo-reactionist tendencies.

What we wish for and we try to re-discover are themes of fantasy, expression, intension, lyrics and spirituality. Due to this wish and approach we are being categorized into a very broad area of new sensitivity or new romanticism. Which are not yet a specifically defined theoretical concepts and may never be, but for us it is a certain attitude, a sensibility transformed into an expression of dissatisfaction about the present paradigm. It lead us to a fascination with amateur and enthusiastic practices, abstracted from any canon and professional form, but using traditional materials and craft, which we try to apply into our practise. Plus also to an inspiration and reference, in the frame of contemporary art, to neglected genres such as fantasy and horror, which allow us to amplify the lost intensity. And as these have its origin in folk creativity, we are very much influenced by myths, legends and fairy tales, especially its golden age of pre-war illustration, from which derives also another historical reference to an aesthetics of symbolism and ghotic. But fairy tales and its theory in particular serve as a frequent source of knowledge and language.  As Swiss psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz states:

“...After studying many fairytales, I came to a conclusion, that all fairytales attempt to describe the very same psychological experience. However, this unknown experience is so complex and broad, and so hard to comprehend in all its aspects for us, it takes thousands of repetitions to interpret it with consciousness. Even after that though, this topic won’t be exhausted...“

We approach art in a similar manner – not trying to utilize it but experience it.

Our position of young artists from a country with a poorly developed market of young art has developed in us, rather than a sense of rivals and a struggle of competition, a sense of belonging. Perhaps rather than stick to the infinite originality of our work and preaching its specificity, whether in an artistic or social context, and perhaps rather than participating in this struggle as an individual unit that is exhausted by the process itself, it is more important for us to create and link to groups of like-minded artists and individuals that we find mainly in an international context. Through these links and collaborations, we are then able to create works crossing  the boundaries of contemporary discourses and disciplines. Many of our projects originated from collaborating with colleagues, whether art educated or not. We learn from each other, we help and support each other, and in that we find the power of art and creation, no matter how pathetic it may sound.

We are active in our artistic practice and besides linking to some previous projects as for example to puppet animation, we are starting to work on new ones whether they are collaborations or two upcoming solo shows. In the future, we would like to concentrate on linking the works and creative practices of professional and amateur creators with overlapping into local legends and stories, but that is still in the hands of future research.

BIOGRAPHY

"The work of Anna Slama and Marek Delong captivated the jury by its consistency and signature style. In their installations, the artistic duo uses an original visual language that is current for its multimedia character while strongly relying on traditional materials and craft methods. With their strong visual style, the artists call to mind the existence of the world of imagination, expressivity and the subconscious as a possible source of understanding as well as a possible form of personal or social therapy." 

Anna Slama (*1991, Brno) and Marek Delong (*1986, Brno) form an artistic duo since 2015. Delong graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno Technical University (Video Studio), Slama graduated from Konstfack University of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm and went to several study stays, e.g. at Estonian Academy of Arts in Tallinn and Nagar School of Art in Jerusalem. In their artistic practice, they focus on installation, often assuming the dimensions of site-specific scenography, in which they embed their sculptures, objects, videos, and paintings. The duo has shown a long-term interest in emotional strain and return to sensitivity and genuineness of artworks. They create a space for therapy and distance from the anxiety of the current generation facing the pressures of predatory capitalism and the loss of a positive vision of future and hope. By their approach, they are escaping logic and calculation, employing elements of fairy tales, sensuality, and magic to create a space for vulnerability, intuition and unbiased navigation of the world. Delong and Slama regularly exhibit on the Czech and international gallery scenes, having recently introduced their work at CATBOX Contemporary in New York and FUTURA Center for Contemporary Art in Prague.