Brno, June 12 (BD) – 13 statues including gigantic book or breathing invisible sculpture displayed across Brno’s streets are something, you don’t see in an open public space every day. Sculptures in the Streets – Brno Art Open 2017 features sixth edition of an unusual urban art project.
All sculptures are eye-catchers. When walking around Petrov Hill in Brno, tram stop Nové Sady, you can hear regular breathing breaking into urgent one that comes from the corridors beneath the hill. Its architect, Zwiener, sees it as “a metaphoric idea in which the shelter’s corridors transform into a respiratory tract, and the entire Petrov into one large living organism”.
In Velký Špalíček Shopping Center, there is Wunderkammer by Topolovac. Wunderkammer seems to be a museum exhibition of minerals provided with detailed description of its physical qualities. In Fact, objects are mostly melted glass from war-Berlin. “Imitating on the one hand the spirit of consumption with its superficiality, Topolovac’s installation at the same time reflects the current problem of the excessively narrow specialization of scientific research,” read official materials.
In the streets and parks, at the Faculty of Law, Římské Náměstí, Moravské Náměstí, you can find gyroscopic overload simulator suggesting “the commercialization of science and the overall loss of orientation”; interactive clock for by-passers showing time only as an illusion of our consciousness; the melting snow in the middle of summer as a visual trap and much more. If you encounter a man rolling a stone before him, it’s a part of the project, too. Try him and ask something, his answer should be “It is my work.” Remember, there are 13 sculptures all over the city and there are worth to see and worth to think about. The complete list of them is available here.
“One of the greatest paradoxes in the current world is our contradictory approach towards truth,” say festival curators Tomáš Knoflíček and Libor Novotný. The exhibition is strongly intertwined with current state of people’s mind, philosophy and the nature of truth in the times of alternative facts. “We live in a post-factual period, so we do not seek the truth, but merely confirmation of our own prejudices.”
The statues are to be seen and contemplated from June 7 to August 27 in several Brno’s locations here. The tradition of Sculptures in the Streets – Brno Art Open launched in 2008 strives to mediate the interaction between public space and art. This year is special since Brno Art Open will be retrospectively reviewed during a public debate with Matěj Hollan, the Deputy Mayor of the City of Brno and all festival curators. Citizens can submit their personal opinion in Brno House of Arts [Dům Umění].
Title picture: Brno-stred.cz
