{"title":"Books","description":"","products":[{"product_id":"david-cerny-tomas-pospiszyl-the-fucking-years-original-release","title":"David Černý, Tomáš Pospiszyl: The Fucking Years (original release)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tThe Fucking Years - a true story\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tLIfe and work of an artist\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t31,5 x 22 cm, 64 pages\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\twritten by Tomáš Pospiszyl\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPublished by Divus, Ivan Mečl\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tRedaction Tomáš Pospiszyl, David Černý and Ivan Mečl\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tTranslation Vladan Šír \u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tEnglish redaction Jeffrey A. Buehler\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tProduction and design Divus\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tCover Ivan Mečl, photoghraphy  M. Polák\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tReproductions and montage Blanka Brixová a Radka Johanidesová\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tAuthor of the text is Tomáš Pospiszyl, unless marked otherwise\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tManifest Úchvatných\/The Manifesto of the Goluptious  written by\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tTomáš Pospiszyl, David Cerný and probably also Filip Turek\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe works of Marcel Duchamp and Bohumil Kubišta written by David Cerný, Tomáš Pospiszyl and Dalibor Fencl\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSoutok and Mrchy written by David Černý\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tRecommended to art school students\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tOriginal period edition.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505786540283,"sku":"","price":32.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/e5c465299dbed43c8d8000a5ee751a9b.jpg?v=1726096820"},{"product_id":"kristof-kintera-730920-0184-95-05","title":"Krištof Kintera: 730920\/0184 (95-05)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t\u003cstrong\u003eA scheme of operation, \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tmodern art and what came after it is one of the most specialized domains ever produced by the Western civilization. Yet modern and contemporary artists have never been  showing deep respect for the civilization that created them. They often called for reformation or a direct rejection of civilization. In the 19th century they appealed to run into exotic countries, in the 20th century they even planned the change of the whole world. The art of the last century is typical for its admiration of demonstrations which were by most people considered  hopelessly “primitive”. The critique of civilization  or at least a watchful vigilance towards the principles of how the society works is not just a domain of art. There are new movements arising which try to create their parallel world with it own laws. They don’t renounce  the technology which is a product of the system they revolt against but they use it in a different way, liberated from the hierarchical context of the surrounding civilization. The Western countryside is being crossed by caravans of independent sound systems, there are various communities linked via mobile nets. As the art of avant garde got joined with the art of native nations or the visual art manifestations of kids or insane people, the architects of this day are inspired by improvised architecture of slums and weekend houses, the media theoreticians  defend CD copying and artists take seriously those who  in various ways recycle the products of  bloated industry. Among them Krištof Kintera has an air of a deliberate civilization vagrant who  most of all cherishes his freedom to see things from outside. He doesn’t have to run away to Tahiti but likes to examine in a trivial way the mechanisms of the society surrounding him.  As any contemporary artist he is somewhere at the top of the hierarchy of the food pyramid of the civilization metabolism but that doesn’t mean that he is an elitist. He works in a simple way, always using only those means and abilities he has at hand.  Many of Kintera’s works  seem to show our world as if it has just undergone some unseen apocalypse which leaves the surviving to manage their living with a skillful help of ruins and rubbish, leftovers of the catastrophe. The mutated objects have their own life, the crazy electronics and uncontrollable biotechnologies wipe off the boundaries between the living and the dead. Kintera works with what he finds around.  Surely we can say something similar of any artist, but a tiny bit more of Kintera. He is a gatherer who lives on the discoveries of objects and situations. He buys, recycles objects and ideas, shifts them into consequences for which they were not mentioned but help to explain their essence.  He is a hacker of the goods whose main characteristic is the ability of improvisation. The absurdity of today’s world in his works is visible just because they are mostly inconspicuous, the viewer must  approach them figuratively to see them and hear them. These silent, subversive strokes don’t want to change the outer world, they don’t  plan a revolution, their ambition is to change our perception of the world around us and ourselves.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t\u003cem\u003eTomáš Pospiszyl\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tEnglish and Czech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t96 pages in colour and hardback + DVD\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t24 x 21,5 x 1,3 cm\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tText: Tomáš Pospiszyl\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tInterview: Přemysl Dobyduch\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tGraphic layout: Krištof Kintera\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tRepro: Blanka Brixová\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPrint works: DIVUS\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tTranslation: Magda Pěnčiková, William Hollister\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t2006\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tISBN: 80-86450-39-2\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505786573051,"sku":"","price":28.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/4e9e41ebdafe34aa07c3ed7d246b8690.jpg?v=1726096822"},{"product_id":"jiri-cernicky-videus","title":"Jiří Černický: Videus","description":"\u003cp\u003e\n\tEnglish and Czech\u003cbr\u003e\n\tA book of czech most attractive artist. Ten successful years of the first schizophrenia produced in series now in full-color with graphic design by Marek Pistora. A book that reveals art to be a ride in the clouds in skin-tight hi-tech overalls. Jiří Černický seduces us in his own texts and the colorful theoretics of Tomáš Pospiszyl and Lity Barrie fill out the book.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\n\t160 pages, 24 x 21,5 x 1,1 cm| Written by Lita Barrie, Tomáš Pospiszyl, Jiří Černický| Published by Divus, Ivan Mečl|Consultation: Karel Císař|Concept of the Catalogue: Jiří Černický, Marek Pistora, Karel Císař|Editorial Staff: Jiří Černický, Marek Pistora and Ivan Mečl|Translation: Alice and Jeff A. Buehler|Layout: Marek Pistora|Pre-press: Divus|Cover: Marek Pistora|Scanning and reproduction: Blanka Brixová|2003|ISBN: 80-86450-25-2\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\t\u003cstrong\u003ePsycho-sexual death in urban evnirons\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\n\tThe radical urban chic of Jiří Černický’s Hollywood–inspired sculpture is undercut by a Kafkaesque absurdity that immediately suggests a different cultural sensibility. The vanguard Czech artist makes quirky visual connections between his own European art history and cultural icons, Hollywood pop culture and today’s global youth culture. His classical references and trained craftsmanship are charged by the use of synthetic materials borrowed from today’s youth culture which Černický uses to construct an electric hybrid language which is filled with surprising twists and edgy nuances. In an interesting aesthetic reversal, Černický takes the vernacular and makes it classical — and vice versa.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tFor Černický art is not only a process of making unexpected connections between different cultures, histories and aesthetics — it is also a process of exploring the hidden connections between visible surfaces and invisible psychological depths to reveal the shared archetypal dynamics that underlie obvious cultural differences. In these sculptures, design and purpose are always at odds, suggesting the internal dangers of a preoccupation with outer perfection and external fixations. In Černický’s perplexing world of hidden angst things are never what they appear to be. Černický subtly undermines the banal superficiality of a fixation upon stars and cars with a tragicomic view of the fatal human cost of Hollywood’s artificial values. His perfect designer finishes and fascination with funky sci–fi gadgetry are referenced to the familiar leitmotifs of the L.A. avant–garde — but he underscores these seductive surfaces with a deeper psychological interest in the relationship between sex and death.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tFreud theorized creativity as a conflict between the Eros (sex drive) and the Thanatos (death wish). This conflict has been an enduring theme in art throughout the ages and a metaphor for the dynamics of the creative process itself. Černický implicates both himself and his artwork within the dynamics of this archetypal conflict through the mediacy of the body — which becomes the locus for exploring the deathly psycho–sexual effects of different places on their inhabitants. Even when the body is not visible in his work it is always somehow implicated. The body might be implied through conspicuous absence from bodily accoutrements like shoes, gloves and mask–like helmets or, it might be implied through its transformation into macabre kitschy sculptured figurines, ghostly sci–fi computerized images, or strange video projections. In different ways, Černický uses the mediacy of the body to suggest the subterranean erotic–destructive psychic forces that lie beneath the surface of social order.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tThe body has always provided the most enduring metaphors for art because, as Gregory Battock said, “Art from its beginning was about the body of the art–maker.” Since the pre–beginnings of art can be traced to body decoration and ritual, it is hardly surprising that at times of artistic crisis successive waves of avant–garde artists have used the body to upturn the artistic conventions of their time — whether it was the old European academy, the commodification of art in the 70s, or the current institutionalization of art. The ways in which these artists codify the body defied the social restrictions of the time and place in which they lived. It is also characteristic of artists who understand that making art is a lifetime commitment to use their own body as a starting point for developing their artistic vocabulary. In an almost Genet–like way, this approach to art–making creates a highly personalized mystical connection between their own corporeal existence and history.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tHowever, this use of the body as a site for intervention and transformation becomes much more complex in Černický’s work because he combines something of the familiar “bad boy” stance of the avant–garde with the quasi–mysticism of a Genet–like conception of the body as the site of transformation, with references to the radical chic of today’s urban youth culture — which uses body scarification, tattooing, and piercing as a sign of social protest.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tČernický’s work demonstrates that the effects of Hollywood and corporate–controlled fashion and trends on today’s international youth culture are sometimes even more obvious outside Los Angeles — where simulated reality is manufactured — because the simulacra takes a more astral dimension in a global context. In urban societies mesmerized by new technologies the body has been turned into a political sign which is viewed from the outside as an image — rather than a locus for experiencing the world in a phenomenological way, from the inside out. A disenfranchised, de–spirited youth culture which feels helpless in a simulated world of disinformation, corporate control, and disassociated experience uses the body as the site for transgression — while at the other end of the socio–economic spectrum the desperately image–conscious reconstruct the body with silicone implants and liposuction to simulate a Hollywood fiction of sexual glamour.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tThe world of technology not only holds the body in political servitude but has also desensitized us to the sensory experience of the body and, correspondingly, to the sensate experience art offers — which is why so many contemporary American artists have turned to the abject body and its fluids. However, this is a pathetic and degraded body which is too scattered to revitalize and invigorate art in the way that artist’s have pulled strength from the body in the past — it is merely a sad and somewhat indulgent apology for the dissolution of the sensate power art once had.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tČernický uses the symbolism of the body–self in a more poignant poetic way, by turning technological illusions back upon themselves to suggest the fatal unseen psycho–sexual effects of Hollywood’s superficial fictions on its inhabitants. His work shares some aspects of abject art because it addresses the same cultural ethos of body degradation, but his meticulously crafted pieces have a formal precision and pristine polish which comes from a more academy–based tradition of art education which brings a more disciplined toughness and a greater sense of history. On the other hand, he does not allow his traditional craftsmanship to override his innovative impulses or the cutting–edge quality of his work. Instead, it adds a biting twist to his choice of pop materials and thematic references to see, for example, carefully carved pimples on a punk Medusa. The care involved in this craftsmanship also prevents his work from collapsing into the nihilism it explores.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tBy underscoring these contradictions between pop materials and traditional craftsmanship with references to the deathly psycho–sexual aspects of bodily inhabitation in the urban world, Černický touches nerves which allow the viewer to feel his own anguished conflicts. These sculptures are filled with precariously balanced contradictions — between the scientific and the mystical, the seductive and the disturbing, the playful and the macabre — that resist any fixed academic reading and resonate at a more humane level. By borrowing the toxic materials of today’s youth culture — like foam, plastic, syringes, helmets, and sunglasses — which are as threatening as anything in the polluted environment, he implicates himself within the ills of our time as one who is “allergic” (to use a recurring phrase from titles of past works) to the toxic beauty of urban environs — while at the same time distanced by a more classical sense of history.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tArt traditionally belongs to the private space between viewer and viewed which has been infiltrated by new technologies. This represents a profound loss because art is neither simulated nor cerebral — it is the immediacy of the experience of art that emotionally, spiritually and viscerally engages us. Černický attempts to go beyond the angry polemical aspects of social commentary to evoke the more ineffable “spirit of the times” through the poetry of the body and the fragile metaphors it generates. In the era of cynicism he is not afraid to express tender heartfelt emotions — although he frames them in a veneer of popular kitsch.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tIn Happyend Shoes Černický takes the meaning of fuck–me shoes a ridiculous step further by staging a comic sex act between two beautifully crafted pairs of white Hollywood Star shoes joined like plasma in what appears to be an absurd co–dependency. The shoes are even more amusing because there is something about white shoes that just isn’t sexy — which Černický cleverly plays upon, evoking the conflicting sex and death dynamic through their mysterious contradictory associations with old Hollywood musicals, walks of fame and, oddly, graveyard lilies. Nearby, Černický installs a disturbing background of ghostly sci–fi images — which have been generated from photographs of homeless people lying on a sidewalk. The unnerving juxtaposition of these potent signifiers of stardom and destitution explores the sex and death dynamic further. In this ironic play on dysfunction and design, the inhabitants of the shoes and the sidewalks are mysteriously implied through absence. Černický’s view of the way Hollywood idolizes fame over humanitarian concerns — while espousing kitsch pop spirituality — is filled with pathos. The haunting sense of loss created by these sculptures suggest an almost romantic yearning for a more utopian world. And yet they also suggest that there is no simple antidote to the toxic effects of our time.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tIn The Luxury of Grief Černický uses the sorrowful body gestures of two small chrome figures on the front of two luxury Lincoln as a grief–stricken metaphor for the undercurrent of emotional desperation beneath L.A.’s car–dominated culture. Cloud Rider is a funny yet sad pun that acts like a sound bite for Černický’s interest in the dynamics between cars\/stars and sex\/death. Černický suspends a small figure strangled by a blue cloud–like boa from the rearview mirror of a car. The faster the car moves the faster the figure approaches death in this spoof on the time–saving purpose of cars. Amusingly, the figure has a smile and an erect penis — suggesting its paradoxical relationship to the car, which is both a sexual symbol and an instrument of death.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tMedusa is an earlier work and is emblematic of Černický’s oeuvre. This macabre yet exquisitely crafted and painted sculpture — which juts out from the wall like a ship’s figurehead — functions as a multi–layered metaphor for urban violence, addiction and toxic values. The pouting, pallid–faced woman with protruding pimples, wears heavily painted make–up and red lipstick, sunglasses and hair curlers wrapped around menacing snake–like drug syringes which threaten to dangerously poke anyone who stands too close. The ancient Medusa who embodied the drama of psycho–sexual death is updated into an ultra–contemporary urban icon of self–destruction or, perhaps a symbol of the Eros and Thanatos conflict in the artistic process itself.\u003cbr\u003e\n\tRather than sensationalizing his loaded sexual subject matter, Černický explores its deathly shadow side to suggest the complex contradictions of our time. He subtly reveals the psychic dominion of the Eros and the Thanatos which always threatens to rebel against social control. It is by embodying the tension between these contradictory yet inseparable life and death impulses that Černický’s works become archetypal and touch a chord in the viewer.\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\n\tLita Barrie teaches at Art Center College of Design\u003cbr\u003e\n\tLos Angeles, 2000\u003cbr\u003e\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\n\tBurka (spirit of the East in the West - performance, para-business), 2002, global burka)*RIDE (Sentimenthol) - 1998, (variable dimensions), dressing table, various hybrid objects*fashion exposion – detail*Pincushion, Father (daily voodoo), 1999, 14x10 cm, cloth, metal, glass*RIDE (Sentimenthol) - 1998, (variable dimensions), dressing table, various hybrid objects*FIRST SCHIZOPHRENIA PRODUCED IN SERIES - 1998\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505786835195,"sku":"","price":9.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/1b3ea28d1661edc77ee11c0c8d5adcc4.jpg?v=1726096825"},{"product_id":"veronika-drahotova","title":"Veronika Drahotová: Mind The Heart","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCzech and English\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e20 pages on quality chalk paper\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e22 x 20,5 cm\u003cbr\u003eDesign: Veronika Drahotová\u003cbr\u003eText: Tomáš Pospiszyl\u003cbr\u003eTranslation: Lenka Krsiaková, Vladan Šír             \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished for the exhibition „Mind the Heart (Pozor na srdce)“, 2001\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePhotographs from the Veron series (Sbohem má konkubíno\/Farewell my concubine)\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePhotographs from the Lenscape series\u003cbr\u003e(Pohraniční pásmo\/Frontier zone)\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505786900731,"sku":"","price":9.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/veron-obal.jpg?v=1745097029"},{"product_id":"veronika-drahotova-1","title":"Veronika Drahotová: Friends Forever","description":"\u003cp\u003eCzech\u003cbr\u003e20 pages on chalk paper\u003cbr\u003e22 x 20,5 cm\u003cbr\u003eText: Dhoula Bel (Ivan Mečl)\u003cbr\u003ePhoto: Martin Polák.\u003cbr\u003eTranslation:  Vladan Šír.\u003cbr\u003eDesign: Ivan Mečl\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505786933499,"sku":"","price":600.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/drahotova_WEB.jpg?v=1745091705"},{"product_id":"charlotta-kotikova-jan-hisek","title":"Charlotta Kotíková: Jan Hísek","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t80 pages, hardback , 32 x 22 x 1 cm\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tPhotographs of works: Ivan Pinkava, Vasil Stanko, photograph of the artist: Ivan Pinkava, 2001\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tText: Charlotta Kotíková, Otto M. Urban, Tomáš Pospiszyl, Jan Hísek\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\ttranslation: Vladan Šír, Jeffrey A. Buehler\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tGraphic design, typesetting and preparation of images for printing: DIVUS, Blanka Brixová, Jan Hísek\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tPublished by: DIVUS, 2001|ISBN: 80-86450-10-4 ||\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505787064571,"sku":"","price":29.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/35fc819a217fc684d42152a0f705bbba.jpg?v=1726096832"},{"product_id":"lukas-jasansky-martin-polak-country-photography","title":"Lukáš Jasanský, Martin Polák: Country Photography","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t\u003cstrong\u003eMedia in The Fields\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tAt first glance, the landscapes of Lukáš Jasanský and Martin Polák may appear somewhat insipid, often to the point of being horrifying. Their theme - now known as classically deviant  one - is being agronomically profiled, set free from any singularity, not to mention romanticism. The landscape seen from an urban point of view, the landscape beyond the hiking signs (though one appears in one picture) whose desperate immensity is often too much to swallow for the strength and understanding of an individual nursed on the metropolis. In this cycle, the artists also apply their traditionally “wonder-struck” approach. And this is how they show that we in fact know nothing about our own landscape, as again and again they construct a phantasmagoric world from a single photograph and are fascinated by its possible, and, at the same time, ever so extravagant literalness, hidden in each grain of the negative.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t...\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cem\u003eFrom text by Pavel Vančát\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cstrong\u003e Conceptual Landscapes of Photography\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThis long postponed text has been slowly coming to me now for about a year – in my head, while reading various books, going through catalogues and photographs, while „browsning“ through the cycle Landscapes (Country Photography), which in this publication is receiving (after the exhibition and demo-CD) its next „definitive“ context. As with everything postponed, this text also carries within it a trace of hesitation, because the right, and thus the lucky, (sometimes carefree, but always slightly misleading) moment of inspiration is probably gone, and the authorities on which we should lean, rather than being an assurance, are becoming a pretext for the abuse of certain discursive practices.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe longer I dragged my feet deciding what and how to write about Lukáš Jasanský and Martin Polák´s position (regardless of wheather ti was reflective, intuitive, or cultivated through dialogue) towards history and the possibilities of media, including their stand on the visual culture of its environment (1), the more it became clear to me that the photography of this art duo was a thing to be taken seriously. One of the sources of my extended procrastination was an unwillingness to accept the entertainment side to their work to which we usually and rightly succumb while looking at it. I did not wish to move a „light pen“ to depreciace the lightness and obviousness they have been bringing to the visual art context at home and in interantional circles since the 1980s. The certain heavy-handedness of several „explanations“ I managed to come to at the edge of the cycle Lanscapes could then be blamed on spite.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t...\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cem\u003eFrom text by Marek Pokorný\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505787261179,"sku":"","price":24.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/ce83ed32d62eccadc92b4f62374480fb.jpg?v=1726096836"},{"product_id":"lukas-jasansky-martin-polak-village","title":"Lukáš Jasanský, Martin Polák: Village","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tBook of black and white photographs containing three cycles capturing slow creeping decline of czech countryside. „Village“, „Thou our rural reconstruction!“ and „The old way“ are strange combination of humor and professional obsession in photography. Thats the way how photography becomes art without attribute of technology.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tAbove our heads events have towered, straining the iron construction of the inhuman world that exhorts the agreement of our will and claims that it had originated from that will. And yet, it is still up to us to decide whether or not we wish to become its culprits and captives. This ogreish metallic construction does not know or does not want to admit that within itself it has been nibbled away at by a million counter wills that will one day use the remnants of this construction as building material for the creation of a brand new world. But let us not forget, however, that the appearance of this next world will stem from our current most secret thoughts, and is already hidden in our own heart’s heroic intentions and dreams.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe writer Hilaire Belloc wandered on foot throughout the whole of France and England, unveiling to himself the countryside’s ancient appearance — the network of old Roman roads, the borders of Celtic provinces. One could say: pure eccentricity; what point is there to such discoveries? For such discoveries certainly do not make any direct contribution towards the moulding of modern society or to the increasing of material wealth. They do, however, uncover - often more eloquently and persuasively than written sources - the traces and contexts of human history and past civilisations. Civilisation and technology change the very surface of a country; pedestrian paths or roads intended for horse-drawn vehicles had to allow for different characteristics in the road surface than today’s contemporary highways for automobiles do; nonetheless, they often followed similar paths — their task being to connect equivalent parts of the country.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIt seems that human memory has a need to constantly make sure of its unity and continuity, thereby allowing some sort of design and meaning to become apparent. Why else would geologists and archaeologists strive to uncover the history of our earth: the buried layers of its former ancient appearance, the development of life in various pre-historic periods? Is it always possible to claim that this type of exploration has some practical goal? That it will be imminently of use to something or someone? – Hardly so. It is instead evidence of the fact that the mystery of human life, and life in general, in fact, even the mystery of the existence of all things whatsoever, still remains open, and, even more so, that it deepens itself with each new discovery, and indeed that if humanity were suddenly free of these concerns, interests and anxieties, their very dignity would suffer at that same moment.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSo be it that civilisations rise, mature, and die away; we are on this planet only to build and then destroy civilisations, these temporary structures, machinas transituras, just as one generation of termites builds a termitary that will be destroyed and once again rebuilt in the course of the unyielding continuity of a species.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tWhere does human suffering come from? Is it only the consequence or accompanying result of injustice or material misery, or does it exist independent of the material and social situation of man? Can a man suffer spiritually even though he \"does well\", as they say, and, if so, then why?\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIf we say out loud the word ‘suffering’, we might at first recall an idea or memory of hunger, cold, dirt, illness or bodily injury. But physical suffering is accompanied by mental suffering of various varieties and degrees: by the sensation of humiliation, anger, envy, fear, derogation, or the paralysis of spiritual capabilities and powers. Once the physical desolation and pain achieves a certain level of violence and gravity, our physical involvement becomes so intense that there is virtually no room left for spiritual suffering; we are fully exhausted, unable to resist any humiliation and pain — forced to bear the passing of infinite time, which cannot be whiled away even through sleep. One could argue that we have chosen an unsuitable moment for such contemplations. When one is lying under the debris of a collapsed building, caught in the gears of a terrible piece of machinery that is dragging one’s body relentlessly on and on, or when one is forced to listen for the sound of hob-nailed police boots behind one’s door, no doubt one can hardly find the time to contemplate matters not directly relevant to the situation in hand at that present moment. We can certainly understand that it is not easy to think rationally when a person is experiencing physical suffering - when one is oppressed by anxiety and uncertainty. We do believe, however, that it is definitely necessary to at least try; or that it is necessary that at least some people do try. For our future is not dependent solely on our actions at that very moment, but, and perhaps much more importantly, on our thoughts at that moment and what is at that point rooted in the depths of our heart and soul.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tWe have inherited our present world from our ancestors, but we should not be blaming everything on them alone. It might be that we are indebted to them not only for having continued in their work but also sometimes for having corrected it. According to the idea of the Christian community of the living and the dead, it might be that we are dependent on them, but they are equally dependent on us. For it is in our power, in the power of each and every one of us, to repay the debt that ties us in both directions directly to them: not only can we rectify the ways in which we have betrayed them, but we can also make right anything that they might have seen and done wrongly, the things in which they were perhaps mistaken. - - -\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe time that is lost cannot be regained, and it is often impossible to physically repair that which has been done wrongly. We know how feeble we are when it comes to sticking to the best of our resolutions. But it is not possible to live with this constant dichotomy within oneself, with the feeling that we have ended up somehow outside of our life without quite knowing how: doubtless it was a series of both small and large infidelities and betrayals that all of a sudden created the large abyss before us. Death seems suddenly terribly close. What have I done with the time that separates me now from my childhood—at once so distant and so close?\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tHave I allowed the sources that were streaming from it dry out, have I dimmed the light that made childhood so bright?\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t(Selected excerpts from essays written by the Czech Catholic poet Jan Čep \/1902 – 1974\/. Compiled by Lukáš Jasanský and Martin Polák from the book SAMOMLUVY A ROZHOVORY, Vyšehrad Publishing House, 1997)\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t****************\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505789587707,"sku":"","price":26.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/fab9642bec04dfedae772f74aeaea600.jpg?v=1726096838"},{"product_id":"igor-korpaczewsky-shadows-of-kw","title":"Igor Korpaczewský: Shadows of KW","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tThis book by top Czech painter Igor Korpaczewski, who goes by the pseudonym KW and teaches at Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts, contains pictures and drawings from 1990 to 1997. The figural paintings of Korpaczewski explore the relationships between the conscious and unconscious, the power and the powerless. Figures in a hypnotic trance, representatives of unknown androids and supermen are confronted by world consumption and pop culture. Korpaczewski presents these figures as sad new-age gods.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tA Contract with the Unconscious\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIntimate and foreign is the world of androgynous beings walking the line between sleep and death. It is as if one wakes up almost by accident and cannot remember what is real and what is just a dream from which one returns. One cannot tell one world from the other and decide who is the person to whom all those things happened. Viewing Igor Korpaczewski’s narrative paintings, one experiences just the same painful deja vu, similar to a state of hypnosis. One first enters his stories and only short time later realizes how well they are painted.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIt is not easy to be intensely engaged with figurative painting as is the case of Korpaczewski. A figure in painting has represented visually spiritual poverty for many years. Exploring identity obviously leads to grotesqueness. To paint a figure seriously would mean a return to academics. The fact that such figurative painting is carried out successfully (Korpaczewski has been doing so for at least ten years) does not represent just another wave of classical (imagery) painting renaissance. If we were to talk about concept in Igor Korpaczewski’s case, we may conclude that the concept is to bring something „real“ into the painting. Still, Korpaczewski works with the feeling that such a thing is actually impossible.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tKorpaczewski’s painting is determined by the selection of topics, their careful and quite meticulous thought which is hard to be mislead by chance. The themes make up a compact unity or rather a single story which may be intelligibly interpreted given a certain amount of sensibility. The important fact is that the story cannot be separated from the way Korpaczewski paints. This approach is quite rare in contemporary art while only a few people try to evaluate and articulate its meaning. On the contrary, it is typical to speculate about the medium which is a mere phase of a different expression or it has to drag along attributes for identification. Nobody, howerver, dares to put it away to the dump of art history alltogether. A good painting, if we are still able to recognize it, comprehends the same power as if it was painted for the first time.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIgor Korpaczewski’s paintings radiate precisely this feelling: their self-evidence is astonishing. Just one figure or one face on the canvas are enough as the rest is told with colors and brush strokes. Painting an advertising-like beautiful face and letting it work without conceptual subtext requires a contract with the unconscious. The painting may then look as if it was „real“. Where have we seen it before? In another world perhaps? In our hearts? It resembles so many lives which we didn’t have the chance to live. An artist has to find the courage to open them and believe that doing so is meaningful despite the fact that it may sound out-of-fashion today.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t(It doesn’t matter whether the artist chooses a brush or a computer.)\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"English","offer_id":46505790439675,"sku":"","price":99.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Czech","offer_id":46505790472443,"sku":"","price":99.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/34217b94d9cfe41a1ef1380b0c112198.jpg?v=1726096841"},{"product_id":"pode-bal-pode-bal","title":"PODE BAL: PODE BAL","description":"\r\n            english or czech\u003cbr\u003eThe Czech group Pode Bal was founded in 1997 and their work grew out of  a critique of visual communication. The group has re-policized the art scene,  and has been significantly engaged in discussion centered around drugs  and the law, parliamentary election, taboo problems related to the eviction  of Germans after the Second World War, and the critique of art institutions.  The group has realized many projects in public places and media.  (East Art Map - A (Re)Construction of the History of Art in Eastern Europe)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  A skewered Marlboro ad featuring a hookah-smoking man bore the legend:  \"Pode Bal warns that smoking nonstate-owned drugs can damage your freedom.\" (New York Times)  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDisney gave Pinocchio Jimi Cricket to be his conscience. The Czech Republic  has Pode Bal.  (The Prague Post)  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePode Bal combines fashion and socio-political commentary: a black-and-white  Palestinian head scarf embroidered with the Hermes logo; a curved  Middle Eastern dagger with a Swiss Army knife handle; a sleek lightbox  photo of a woman in a white burqa, with one eye exposed where the fabric  is cut in the shape of a Nike swoosh.  (Art in America)\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJan Kavan (part of the Malík Urvi series), electrostatic transfer on canvas, 100 x 120 cm, 2000*Zimmer Frei, installation project and public space intervention, part of the international exhibition of political art Politik-um \/ New Angagement, Gallery and courtyard of Prague Castle, May 2002*Serial Sniper, public space installation, part of Billboart Gallery Europe, Bratislava, Slovakia, 2003**Burka Nike (part of the series Converse), Cprint, variable size, 2005,  installation view at the exhibition Ballkünstler in Museum der Bildenden Künste,  Leipzig, Germany, 2006  **Pode Bal members Petr Motyčka and Michal Šiml, painting Nazi symbols near Charles Bridge, still from a Czech TV report, Prague, 2005**\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505790603515,"sku":"","price":24.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/7da0ab4e308558e755668f2af1d36f7f.jpg?v=1726096843"},{"product_id":"tomas-lahoda-messe","title":"Tomáš Lahoda: Messe","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tEnglish and Czech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tAn extensive catalogue for an exhibition in the National Gallery in Prague. Eighty full-color pages packed with the best of Lahoda’s work: 15 series of pictures in various styles and genres are produced here in the fair spectacle style of the kunst–messe\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tContents:\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tVanitas between Epistemology, Simulation and Existence or \"The Truth at the Bottom of the Well\"\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tDomestic\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe Spectator in the Picture\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tA Word on Modernism\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tLast Monet\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIkebama\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tGenre Paintings\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tModels\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tMirors\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tAcid barok\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tBambi´s eyes opened in surprise\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tTulips\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tMoguls\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tAs paintings\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t„The truth at the Bottom of the Well“\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tProject Stockholm\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tInterview\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPages 16 a 17, Virtuality 1 and 2, 1993, acrylic on canvas, diameter 100 cm*Pages 36 and 38, Acid Barok I., 2000, acrylic on wood, 160 x 122*Pages 60 and 61, Left: Dolce \u0026amp; Gabbana, 2001, acrylic on canvas, 220 x 157 cm\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tRight: Gucci, 2001, acrylic on canvas, 130 x 200 cm and Audley, 2001, acrylic on canvas, 150 x 300 cm\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791258875,"sku":"","price":10.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/31cda5d91202b5da6a510fd237ae9ddf.jpg?v=1726096845"},{"product_id":"tomas-lahoda","title":"Tomáš Lahoda:","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tCzech and English\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t12 pages on chalk paper\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tSize: 21 x 15 cm\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPublisher for the exhibition from March 19 to April 25 in the Moravská galerie Brno, Pražákův palác, Husova 18, 662 26 Brno\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tLayout Ivan Mečl\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPage from the catalogue * Page from the catalogue * Page from the catalogue\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t**\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791455483,"sku":"","price":4.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/41051ebf886127ecac8985f0420b6e64.jpg?v=1726096848"},{"product_id":"christine-petit-xtine-petit","title":"Christine Petit: Xtine Petit","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t48 pages, 22 x 16 x 0,3 cm\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tLayout and pre-press: Radka Johanidesová, Divus\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tCover: photo Veronika Drahotová\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tScanning and reproduction:Blanka Brixová, Radka Johanidesová\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tPrint: Unitisk\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tISBN: 80-86450-09-0\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791488251,"sku":"","price":6.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/3195fad5735afb9d5f5027dfd0fa83ce.jpg?v=1726096850"},{"product_id":"pierre-daugin-the-nude","title":"Pierre Daugin: The Nude","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tEN, DE, FR and CZ\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThis book of photography by French artist Daguin contains a selection of intimately documented acts. Simona Vladíková writes: \"Pierre Daguin lets his sight naturally wash up a stream of images of girls, friends, private places, showcases, girls’ wombs, and portraits…. The black and white photography, including that which is said to be ‘low quality,’ is a raw record of moments of convergence of contextual flux.\" Designed by Markéta Othová, the book has a hard binding and cover.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tNot everyone has the courage to venture into the amorphous regions of his own emotional life, for it is a journey into the unknown which one must make at his own risk and without any guide to take him along. The makeshift rope used to rappel down the dark tunnel is tricky. The wild places inside where we are headed usually remain obscure, hidden by a thicket of rational, externally acceptable fronts. The composed exterior is carefully groomed and kept in isolation. Yet right under the surface of a seemingly disimpassioned shell we see frothing an argosy of heterogeneous motives, wishes, hatreds, loves, fears and many other indiscriminate emotions. It is a wonder that during the daylight hours of our everyday existence we are so correct and tepid in our behavior, for we have learned to craftily hide the eons of our internal eruptions behind a face of impassiveness. Our neat, “civilized” shells have thickened into a hardened crust and our suns overheat in hermetically sealed depths of the soul, making a confrontation with one‘s own molten inside even more dangerous when the casing breaks.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPierre Daguin has decided to rip the blindfold off his eyes and let loose his piercing sight. The result is a photographic record of body surfaces, places and situations enabling the viewer to see under the cuticle. The external visible layer thus becomes a transparent film allowing us to see through, gain insight, get under the skin.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPierre often trains his penetrating look on women, naked women. In his eyes, a woman is here to be penetrated. As unpoetic, harsh and merciless it may seem, this is exactly what one feels looking at his inelegantly expressive, yet gently probing photographs. For the viewer, the commonness, simplicity and directness of Pierre‘s vision characterized by no aesthetizing selection makes the black-and-white pictures a ground for strong emotional projections. Reminiscent of small boys learning to use their first vulgar words, the timidly rude character of the pictures charged with trepidation provide a catchy visual stimulus allowing one to experience his own emotional opening.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPierre Daguin lets his sight to naturally wash up a stream of images of girls, friends, private places, showcases, girls‘ wombs and portraits. A woman offering her body, acting cool and yet overtaken by emotion at the same time. A girl showing off her nudity as if no longer aware what it means or what it reveals about her, what is happening to her or who she is. And the man? He is only eager to watch. Eyeing the pleasant curves of the shell, he is uninterested in anything that lies hidden under the thin skin of the smooth, young body. While at first we may feel the pictures are but a simple record of an intimate situation, an erotic snapshot, at closer inspection we begin to see, able to peel off the delicate layers of fluttering emotional reflections.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tBlack-and-white photography, including that which is said to be “low quality”, is a raw record of moments of convergence of contextual flux. A picture is like a lightning arrester, for it brings together a beam of emotional flux lines, channeling them before our eyes onto a single piece of black-and-white paper, offering them to be sampled by our feelings. Pierre does not restrict his vision or exclude anything from his visual field. He does not trim sections of reality in any way, leaving everything which reality offers, be it sockets on the wall, lack of focus of an overall view or a detail, a light bulb hanging from a wire, a figure out of the frame format, a photographic flaw... Captured within an erotic context, all this is a proof of a view and sensibility free of any rationalizing or ethical clichés and rigid dogmatic tenets. Nothing can be flawed, for there are no flaws.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tOpenness, its various contradicting forms ranging from a much imperfect attempt at opening up to full surrender to another person‘s view, that is the overlying principle diffused in the entire series of Pierre‘s photographs: a gaping cleft of a womb, coy stripping, a relaxed bath dissolving all inhibition, a body huddled in mistrust, an invinting posture with the head thrown back and the arms raised, a mere smile, a direct, penetrating gaze, a half-naked girl‘s body on the floor.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThis is the way in which Pierre Daguin‘s photography reconnoiters and captures extreme situations, edgy moments, the limits of relations. This extremity and marginality, however, is extremely difficult to grasp, for it is unostentatious, furtive, sneaky and obscure. To visually capture something as subtle, one must be capable of natural boldness and daring suggestiveness, candid sensitivity to things unspoken and unrevealed, of sympathetic arriere pensée, of soothing the reaches between smile and coldness. Besides, he must be able to record the chilling prickle rising to one‘s heart. It is the ability to feel all this that is needed to produce visual polyonymy of man‘s relation to womanhood as a principle, as a form of vital energy. This approach strips the two poles of human sexuality of the superficiality of mere behavioral patterns, for concentrations on the symbolic meaning of conduct exposes bare the unthought-of dimensions of minute gestures and looks, the hard-to-distinguish expressions twitching in the face.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThis series of pictures has no first-plane story links, yet their atmosphere, the repetition of faces leads the viewer on to instinctively establish relations and unwittingly build plots that lack any chronological succession, yet show a fatal timeless bond, ever so strong because it is mysterious.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tA great part of Pierre Daguin‘s entire work is concerned with relating to women and represents a testimony to an incursion from the man‘s position in that of the women.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThis incursion comes in a variety of forms ranging from collages and felt-tipped pen-drawings of brutal colors to photography representing the more subtler reification of the author‘s attempts at relating to women.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIn Pierre‘s black-and-white photography, the incursion is gyratory and zetetic, governed by a desire to come closer to the remote, unknown, mysterious regions of womanhood, fascinating and at the same time irritating to induce impassion. At times, he fights dominantly, at other times he submissively gives in. Entranced by the infinite force of recreation, he attemps to read from his shadowgraphs what in fact comprises the quintessence of the rapturous, separative, all-encompassing energy. Balancing on the edge, Pierre Daguin juggles with a feeling that he is to be engulfed by something inconceivably temperate, yet forcefully strong.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tHis photography is concerned with seeking a refuge while fearing its depth, darkness, ambiguity and infinity. His pictures spell awe and urge, they constitute an enriching experience.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t*****\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791521019,"sku":"8090237975","price":15.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/e30f95b601ad6582a235cc1bd78b6a2e.jpg?v=1726096852"},{"product_id":"jan-mancuska-m-me","title":"Ján Mančuška: M (Me)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tIn English, German and Czech.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t112 pages, 20 x 20 x 1 cm|Published on the occasion of the exhibition Praha 13 (Prague 13) |in January 2002 in Václav Špála Gallery|and in November in Neue Galerie Graz am Landesmuseum Joanneum|thanks to support from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Neue Galerie Graz and Divus|text Vít Havránek|graphic design Petr Babák|typesetting Machek \u0026amp; Babák Studio|translation Dan Morgan, Rico Schote and Richard Šerý|proofreading Terezka Vanna | pre-press Divus|Print Unitisk|published by Divus in 2002 | ISBN: 978-80-96450-11-7\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791553787,"sku":"","price":8.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/bc4f68617c84448c9f091ff42765f272.jpg?v=1726096855"},{"product_id":"jan-mancuska-u-artists","title":"Ján Mančuška: U (Artists)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tIn english, german and czech.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThis second part of the four-part publication project by the most playful Czech artist is dedicated to his companions in the land-scape of contemporary art.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tArt friends, favorite inspiring personalities, older and younger. Each of them Mančuška considers important to his life and work, and here they get a respectable place. With this book you get a peek into the works of Josef Bolf, Milena Dopitová, Stano Filko, Jesper Alvaer, Jiří Kovanda, Roman Ondák, Boris Ondreiček, Jan Šerých. and Tomáš Vaňek\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791586555,"sku":"","price":8.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/f76aa74a895253c158c45822118f3ffb.jpg?v=1726096857"},{"product_id":"frantisek-matousek-frantisek-matousek","title":"František Matoušek: František Matoušek","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tczech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tFirst independent catalogue by this young graduate of Prague’s Academy of Fine Art. The book summarizes his latest work as it reflects on the petty relations of the Czech art scene with its tooth-and-nail battles for the most visible positions. Curators are disposed of in shoot-outs and competing artists play football on one team.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791619323,"sku":"","price":8.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/93b40987e3338365574518b58b5af7b8.jpg?v=1726096860"},{"product_id":"vaclav-vokolek","title":"Václav Vokolek: Jan Moštěk","description":"\u003cp\u003eCzech\u003cbr\u003e36 pages, 16 x 22 cm\u003cbr\u003eexhibition catalogue Jan Moštekpublished by Ecquo and Divus, 2001\u003cbr\u003egraphic design and preparation for printing Divusvy\u003cbr\u003eprinted by Unitisk\u003cbr\u003ephotographs by Stanislav Marušák\u003cbr\u003eThe paintings come from private collections.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Preface: About a painter who expected a letter that never came\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis will be about a painter who once wrote to me to send him a certain sum of money with which he could buy a house in the woods so that he could paint like Courbet. It will be about a painter who wrote a great prose work About a painter who wanted to paint like Gauguin. It will be about the painter who waited all his life for a letter that never came. It will be about a painter who renounced his own work, which no one cared about. It will be about a painter who, despite the cruel adversity of fate, painted many remarkable pictures. It will be about a painter nobody knows. It will be about Jan Moštěk...\u003cbr\u003eI have heard a curious story from his youth. It is not only charming in itself, it is not only purely literary, as if cut out of Moštěk's prose, but it is also more than symbolic, fateful. That one tragicomic story could affect a whole life? After reading Jan Moštek's prose, we have to agree. His heroes, be it Josef Mánes, Vincent van Gogh or detective Tom Šark, are dragged through life like a horse-drawn carriage through absurd, embarrassing and highly comical incidents. And they resist them, show them off in a convex mirror, perhaps even sneer at them themselves, but they also take them unprecedentedly seriously. As their destiny. Destiny. And he is here as an eccentric director who pays attention only to details. It would seem that he misses the whole, but that may not be true. \"\"He had no choice but to sell invisible images to the people,\" wrote Jan Moštěk.\u003cbr\u003eBut let's go back to an old story. The young man, looking confident in the photograph, decided to become a painter. Not a painter of rooms, as he was trained to be. That's easy to say, his relatives objected, and the objection was choral, for he had only fifteen siblings. To be a painter does not mean just painting pictures, that would be easy, it also means fame, perhaps even wealth, it means tinkering with inspiration, winning and losing, embracing the muses on a well-defined area of canvas. What can a young man make of all this? To intrusive questions he was said to have answered: \"\"I'm waiting for a letter. Then I'll be famous...\"\u003cbr\u003eHe didn't. Perhaps the longed-for letter is lost somewhere, or his address is mixed up, or perhaps it will be found and delivered with apologies. From a certain moment, known only to Jan Moschek, he no longer waited for the letter. Suddenly he knew that no letter mattered. He no longer waited for anything. He even stopped painting. And just at that moment, the long-awaited letter was on its way. What did it say? The letter's secrecy obliges us to keep silent, but we'll break it. Rather than a letter, it's a message.\u003cbr\u003eDear Jane Moschek, you are a painter. A real painter. Not one who merely whitewashes the speckled dwellings of his fellow men. The little bit of your work that we have discovered is enough to prove your talent. Those less than three dozen paintings could hang in any gallery and not bring you shame. There's a lot hidden in them. Just like your prose. Because you're a writer too, Jane Moschek. You've published a book that has found a whole circle of admirers. So you've lived to see... \u003cbr\u003eToo late? We're afraid not. You know that better than anyone. It's never too late. Or is it always late? How did you write that about Josef Manes? \"\"Each individual carries this boulder on his back. If the boulders were visible, all we would see are huge boulders with people bending under them. Everyone is resisting what you are resisting, because even if you are a genius, there is human weakness in you...\" \u003cbr\u003eIronically, this letter came back unopened. The addressee has since died. He's still waiting. But the possibilities of the post office are terribly limited...\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eII.\u003cbr\u003eWhen judging Jan Moštek's paintings, we must get rid of all literariness and approach them quite professionally. They are a real discovery. They are a surprise. They are not just the work of a gifted self-taught artist, a remarkable proof of the activity of an insider, but a real painting, moreover, one that can be placed in a contemporary context. Once and for all, it is necessary to correct the only published opinion: that Jan Moštěk is not a naive painter!\u003cbr\u003eA fragment of the work places Jan Moštěk's paintings in the traditional line of Czech Expressionism, how not to recall Jan Bauch, whose urgent message is a relay passed on from generation to generation. His landscape paintings in particular are based on the lyrical form of the predatory current. A comparison with Grigori Musatov's landscape paintings of the 1930s is suggested here. I fear, however, that Moštěk has never seen these paintings. Not even in his dreams. I therefore venture an even more curious connection. Some of the paintings seem to have come out of the studio of the postmodern Philip Guston. What? Who? We don't know such a person in Volfiřov.\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNot only the nervous handwriting is admirable, but also the compositional certainty and clear originality. What would many a master give for all this! Moštěk's variability is also interesting; it is hard to say how it has evolved, because the dates of the paintings, as well as their titles, elude us. The technical variety is also remarkable. Jan Moštěk not only mastered the technique of tempera and oil painting, but his numerous watercolours are equally virtuoso. In the few that have survived, the whole range of possibilities offered by this difficult and risky technique is hidden. From the Chinese austerity of Winter Landscape, to expressive urban scenes and portraits, to decorative patches of struggling roosters. Hokusai's name is on our tongues, but to say it...\u003cbr\u003eA few Heads have survived, perhaps part of a larger series. They exude much of Rouault's tragic expressiveness. There is some possibility of real influence here, as Moschek worked with several painters of the Old Rhenish circle after the war. But such a conception of human heads could also be found in the paintings of the new figuration of the 1960s or in the postmodern figuration of the 1980s, for example in the monumental cycle of Baselitz's Heads. All these comparisons squeak, but I do so deliberately. The possibility of classification is, after all, a certain proof of professionalism. But what all influenced Jan Moštek's work will fortunately remain a permanent mystery. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIII.\u003cbr\u003eThe exhibition of Jan Moštek's paintings will not only be a discovery of an unknown painter, i.e. a surprise, but also a fair repayment of the debt we have and feel towards the disgraced artist. Not a very fair repayment. The exhibition presents only a randomly discovered fragment of an admittedly larger work, but we can assume that all its forms are represented. At the same time, however, we must bear in mind the fact that Jan Moštěk has always hidden many a trump card up his sleeve. Surprises are therefore possible. After his unexpected and sudden death, everything returns to where I have kept Moštěk's work for years. To the realm of legends, conjectures and charming mystifications.The author did not participate in the exhibition in the slightest and even distanced himself from it in writing. This was typical of him. \"He didn't give a damn about making friends with people, he knew that distance from them was a better document of knowledge than any friendship with them. We know them better when we don't talk to them, for they seem truer at a distance.\"\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBathing, tempera, 64 x 53 cm\u003cbr\u003eUntitled, tempera, 28 x 35 cm\u003cbr\u003eUntitled, watercolour, 39 x 24 cm\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791652091,"sku":"","price":13.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/mostek02_WEB.jpg?v=1745098487"},{"product_id":"louise-mot-louise-mot","title":"Louise Mot: Louise Mot","description":"\r\n            english and czech\u003cbr\u003eThis catalogue for an exhibition by curator and painter Tomáš Lahoda called \"Beauty, thy name is… L. Mot\" introduces an anonymous artist whose identity Lahoda took great pains to keep secret. This artist, whose exhibition appeared all over Europe, works with Warholian appropriation. Instead of lithography, however, she makes whole series in distinct color variations, with thematic references to the avant-garde.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e**Pubication pages\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791684859,"sku":"","price":5.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/a6cd3fbae7c9af9f8f11b26647613306.jpg?v=1726096867"},{"product_id":"marketa-othova-pierre-daguin-french-connection","title":"Markéta Othová, Pierre Daguin: French Connection","description":"\r\n            english and czech\u003cbr\u003eCo-project of Czech artist Markéta Othová and French artist Pierre Daguin. This publication is a presentation of one exhibition cycle in which Othová made black and white photos and Daguina color pictures. The whole thing was made through long-distance communication by both artists and the result is photographic twins, where the photos describe in detail two parallel worlds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e******Facing pages from book of Pierre Daguin and Markéta Othová\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791717627,"sku":"","price":6.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/7f6f8bbe77a6fb144acd70df745bcb23.jpg?v=1726096870"},{"product_id":"marketa-othova-i-realized-projects-1994-2001","title":"Markéta Othová: I. Realized Projects 1994 – 2001","description":"\r\n            english and czech\u003cbr\u003eA small guide to Othová’s extensive photographic work, about which Tomáš Pospiszyl writes: \"Her way of capturing a moment with her camera can remind us of a diary, as if a hidden camera had documented someone’s private life, creating images that are simultaneously intimate and impenetrable to the outsider. As with every diary description, we see how the simple fact of seeing can be emotional. We see that these shots of ordinary objects can hold information, atmosphere, even a sense of humor…\"\u003cbr\u003eCzech Concepts For The New Century: Great Exchange, High Culture, And Low Budget At The CzechFront Gallery\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe CzechFront Gallery opened on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles at the end of 2000. It is run by the Czech Consulate General in Los Angeles, which also provides major funding and technical support. Additional support is being provided by sponsors, both individuals and institutions. \u003cbr\u003eThe gallery has already featured exhibitions of contemporary Czech art and an historical show of Bauhaus-related avant-garde photography. In the making are, however, also  several exhibitions by American artists from Los Angeles and New York and some joint international projects. The goal of the CzechFront Gallery is broader than the mere showcasing of Czech art: the facility strives to open up communication channels between Prague and Los Angeles, and, potentially, to broaden the information exchange between Europe and California. \u003cbr\u003eEurope looms further away from Los Angeles than from any part of the US. There is, of course, a nine-hour time difference between Prague and Los Angeles, and it takes a twelve hour flight to transport yourself from one to the other, yet geographical distance is obviously not the main issue...\u003cbr\u003eEthnically vibrant and multicultural Los Angeles has thousands of good reasons to look elsewhere than Europe for both cultural inspiration and trade and commercial exchange. Yet Europe today is much more than the lessons of the art history books we all flipped through, yet never really focused on. Europe today lives vigorously and stylishly in the present, both culturally and economically, and its art addresses conceptually the issues that the newly globalized world has been forced to share, whether it likes it or not.\u003cbr\u003eDespite all the seeming disparity and a world of differences, there is a tradition of artistic affinity and mutual attraction between Prague and California, dating back years before the fall of the Wall. What did Chris Burden have in common with the Czech art scene of the 1970s? A great deal as it turned out, as he found out by himself on his rather adventurous trip to Prague, having seen the performances of Petr Štembera. In the late 1980s, a dozen of Los Angeles artists went to Prague to explore the world of alchemy -- after all, when it comes to alchemy, it seems proper to seek inspiration from the site of the court of Rudolf II. Yes, there was alchemy, but the LA artists also found out about the communist police, oppression, and about running fast from demonstrations in Prague when they turned ugly. They were young and eager and did not realize they were experiencing history until months later when they watched the Wall actually go down on a TV screen back in California. Despite all that, they remember The Dialogue Prague\/Los Angeles fondly. \u003cbr\u003eAfter the fall of the Communist regime, many young Americans, especially artists and intellectuals, made Prague a home. Since the early nineties, there are tens of thousands Americans living in Prague. After the barriers to their free travel were removed, Czech artists started communicating with both Europe and the US. They exhibit in New York, but they cherish very much the opportunity to be present and show in California. The most prestigious Czech award for young artists, The Chalupecky Prize, is tied with California: it brings the award recipients to San Francisco for three months each year to work and study. \u003cbr\u003eThis history of interaction and communication brings forward a mind-boggling number of exciting options for projects and exhibitions. We are looking forward to exploring as many as possible.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePower of Destiny, 1999, 10 black and white photographs, 43.3 x 62.9 in.*Fire For Pockets!, 1997, 6 black and white photographs, 43.3 x 62.9 in*Excalibur, 1999, 6 black and white photographs, 43.3 x 62.9 in.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791783163,"sku":"","price":8.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/3e9a9a8311869da7a0820ac84f527cf0.jpg?v=1726096872"},{"product_id":"marketa-othova-fire-for-pockets","title":"Markéta Othová: Fire For Pockets!","description":"\r\n            english and czech\u003cbr\u003eExceptional large-format publication detailing her black and white photo cycle of the same name. Six views on human surroundings that have forgotten their creators existence. However despite the short-sightedness these places would continue to be a part of their deepest core. This cycle was one of the first in a row of now known exhibition collections. Markéta Othová is currently one of the most distinct personalities of contemporary Czech art working in the medium of photography.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e*****\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791848699,"sku":"","price":12.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/14f1801f49bd37af9d8ec2fcf42f8a6f.jpg?v=1726096875"},{"product_id":"kupka-waldes-artist-and-his-collector","title":"Kupka - Waldes | Artist And His Collector","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t\u003cstrong\u003eThe unique relationship between the artist and his collector. Kupka's art work in the Jindřich Waldes collection. Large-format colour publication includes the artistic production of the world renowned Czech artist František Kupka in the private collection of the manufacturer Jindřich Waldes. The book also includes extensive documentation of his commercial and graphic work and important texts by Ludmila Vachtová, Jan Rous. At the end of the publication there is a detailed inventory of the entire original collection.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t\u003cstrong\u003eThe book Kupka – Waldes; The Artist and His Collector\u003c\/strong\u003e is a part of an exhibition of the same title.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIt documents works by František Kupka from the extensive collection of the Waldes Gallery, which was confiscated by Nazi and Communist powers and was returned to the inheritors in 1996.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tKupka's work made up a very significant part of the collection thanks to the friendship between the artist and the collector. Their friendship was very strong and lasted from 1919 until 1939 when Jindřich Waldes was arrested by the Gestapo. He died in 1941 during his escape from occupied Europe.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe publication does not intend to serve as an art historical study of Kupka's work but rather as a resourceful description of Kupka's works in the collection of Jindřich Waldes who acquired them directly from the artist. The book's benefit lies in reminding us of the tradition of private art collecting in Bohemia, which was almost forgotten. It is also the only complete documentation of Kupka’s work in the Collection.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe book includes a comprehensive catalogue of works by František Kupka in the Jindřich Waldes Collection (oil paintings, works on paper, illustrations, sketches, exlibris, sculptures) with their precise titles, years of production, measurements, possible notes by František Kupka, signature, collector’s mark of the Waldes Gallery, provenance, exhibitions and literature concerning the individual works.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe catalogue section of the book presents reproductions of the complete series of drawings Song of Songs which has never been published in its entirety.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tTexts written especially for this book are composed into sections Jindřich Waldes – Collector and Jindřich Waldes – Entrepreneur, selection of correspondence of Jindřich Waldes and František Kupka from 1919 - 1936 (each section also includes notes and separate visual supplement).\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPart of the book are also precise biographies of František Kupka and Jinřich Waldes, list of interns at Professor František Kupka studio in Paris, list of solo and group exhibitions including exhibition catalogues and selected bibliography.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe visual section comprises 143 reproductions with a selection of the most important works from the Collection. The book includes a foreword by Jiří Waldes, son of the collector, and Ludmila Vachtová, one of the most knowledgeable experts on the work of František Kupka.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t\u003cstrong\u003eFrantišek Kupka (1871 – 1957)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tis one of the most significant Czech visual artists of the 20th Century. He is one of the few Czech artist who received wide international recognition and stable place in history of arts. He is considered to be one of the founders or pioneers of abstract painting. Kupka had exhibited his first abstract paintings already in 1911.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tCommunist Czechoslovakia long considered Kupka's works as \"an example of imperialist ideology and cosmopolitan nihilism that is harmful to the peoples,\" and stored them in depositories. Only in 1958, the Czechoslovak state remembered its artistic masters and sent three ideological derelicts Otto Guttfreund, Josef Šíma and František Kupka to represent the country at the World Expo in Brussels.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tWorks by František Kupka are owned by leading international galleries and museums of modern art, prices of his paintings reaching high figures on international markets and rising.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cstrong\u003eJindřich Waldes (1878 – 1941)\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\twas a significant Czech entrepreneur during the first three decades of the 20th Century. In 1902, he established Waldes \u0026amp; Co., engaging in making small metal objects out of which the Koh-i-noor patent became the most famous. In 1907, he expanded into a factory in Prague's Vršovice district, and eventually abroad. Waldes was one of the most significant Czech self-made men. Jindřich Waldes was a great Czech and a patriot which was also reflected in his collecting activities. Works that included Czech masters from the Rudolfinian era to the most important authors of the 19th and 20th Centuries were purchased in Bohemia as well as Vienna, Paris and Berlin. He befriended a number of contemporary artists of that time and supported them. One of his most significant and tight friendships included that with František Kupka. Thanks to this tie, Waldes was able to collect a unique collection of Kupka's work, which is presented to the public today.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"Divus","offers":[{"title":"English","offer_id":46505791881467,"sku":"","price":39.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Czech","offer_id":46505791914235,"sku":"","price":29.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/kupka-en-ob.jpg?v=1744999000"},{"product_id":"otto-placht-otto-placht","title":"Otto Placht: Otto Placht","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tczech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tLarge-format catalogue of images and pastel drawings from the artist’s stay in the South American jungle in the company of Shamans and other peculiar natives. The pictures are successful attempts at visualizing trance initiatory rituals while under the influence of exotic drugs and dance. The pictures are 45 x 65 cm and the colors are true to the originals.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tOtto Placht, born 31. 10. 1962 in Prague\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tEducation: 1982-1988 Academy of Fine Art in Prague\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPedagogical work: Assistant at Academy of Fine Art in Prague in 1990-1993\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tEscuela di pintura amazonica USKO-AYAR, Pucallpa, Peru, Spring 1993\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tMiami Dade Comunity Collage, Miami,USA 1994, 1995\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tExhibitions: Prague, Olomouc, Klenová, Zlín, Most, Miami, Washington, Los Angeles, Madrid\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSupported by the Center for Contemporary Art Soros drew up a Supay project.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIn 1997 established with RNDr. Jan Placht GENGAFUND foundation (Amazontherapy) to support travel to the upper Amazonian region.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t*****\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791947003,"sku":"","price":50.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/5782c90334916bb0ca821d8377ac159e.jpg?v=1726096880"},{"product_id":"tal-shpantzer","title":"Tal Shpantzer:","description":"\r\n            \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e**\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505791979771,"sku":"","price":3.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/600f492ec60c40bd6047921409b57d10.jpg?v=1726096883"},{"product_id":"soukup-vit","title":"Soukup Vít:","description":"\r\n            \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e**\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505792078075,"sku":"","price":8.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/632ee301545042830b9ad734d33304a0.jpg?v=1726096886"},{"product_id":"jiri-suruvka-a-divus-suruvka","title":"Jiří Surůvka a Divus: Surůvka","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tPublication about one of the most interesting contemporary Czech artists, painters, and performers. Jiří Surůvka in full-color with an English insert and large poster. Works include The Dogs of War, The Age of Plastic, Böhmischer Dorf, Venus’s Fly-trap and everything introduced by Jana and Jiří Ševčik on the meaning of the artistic personality of Surůvka. The latest issue of Umělec with the purchase of the catalogue.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cem\u003eLecture by Jana and Jiří Ševčík on Jiří Surůvka\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tJiří Surůvka’s mentality is the mentality of a performer who is deeply involved in the art of life. His performances are realistic, brutal and very different from the tradition of 1960’s and 1970’s. While at that time, performances aimed for an alteration and had an atmosphere of initiation with the artist taking on a role of a shaman, recent performances on the emerging Ostrava scene of which Surůvka is an active member do not have the same ritualistic elements– they continue in the older tradition of militant irony. They are more tongue-in-cheek, aggressive and they take on a socially critical and morally critical role. Surůvka does not play a shaman any more today but instead his role is that of a political clown in a reinvented dada cabaret ”The Lozinski Support Band” which he created together with his cousin Petr Lysáček and other artists. His role of a clown has already been shaping up in the years of what was called the real socialism. He invented an absurd yet logical theory on ”the complementary world” that enabled him to accept reality of that period in the following sense: ”... our reality is a complement to the ideal and as such it has a right to exist. Similarly a theory saying that Adolf Hitler significantly contributed to the successful course of the Second World War may hold its ground.” In addition to his improvised performances, Surůvka regularly organizes some sort of dada-body-art in public space, in the streets, and in supermarkets. He chases us out from galleries and artistic ghettos to the streets to see a cabaret with a schoolgirl, Batman and Adolf Hitler singing together.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSurůvka comes out of the environment of emancipated outsiders and amateurs in the devastated city of Ostrava, taking advantage of all its positive features. A strong subculture lives on extremes. On extremes of decentralized intellectuals, heretics, anarchists and libertine dilettantes. This environment lacks the violence of tradition and esthetics, fear of loosing continuity. On the other hand, one may have a light-hearted conversation with the evil (as a complement to the moral ideal). The Ostrava scene includes the last remains of subcultural bohemian people and is typical for its carnival-like elements such as the Malamut international performance meeting during which Surůvka, dressed as Batman, sets off to the streets with his accomplices – apocalyptic knights armed with chainsaws, mowers and helmets. Having taken place four times already, Malamut went unnoticed by art critics despite its importance for the country. The festival’s performances go beyond boundaries of professional cultural institutions and naturally infiltrate social life. They, indeed, have a character of a lived presence. Confronting common urban life, their participants are running a risk of being misunderstood. There, however, is no other way as the peripheral art scene lacks the safety net of professional institutions and the upholstered asylum of galleries. Ostrava artist is not being blocked by any mediators and has to have a ”primitive” relation to reality. The artist has to be anti-psychological and has to be able to naturally evoke even destructive atmosphere. The performances, however, do not follow the old well-arranged and precisely prepared scenarios. The classic performance is undermined and the artist, with his provisional philosophy and provisional art, shows himself in the role of a representative of power both in terms of society and arts. The esthetics of morale is turned inside out. Instead of a shaman, a clown walks up on stage showing that the most commonplace bodily act may mean that our lives are not secured. It is a very effective therapy in today’s political spectacle which has already been suggested by the dadaists: ”the moment we sit down on a chair means that we put our lives in danger”.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tHis performance and ”complementary strategy” also form background for Surůvka’s paintings, installations and objects. They are based on the same extremes and start up ironic polemic with time and its cynical foundations. Just with two or three paintings, Surůvka is able to show the real state of affairs. His image repertory ironically paraphrases (and embodies) all representatives of power – aggressive militarism, politics, the state, the nation, arts, pop-culture, and sex. Surůvka is a moralist who seemingly accepts the situation with his self-ironizing pose and confuses viewers by suggesting that there may be two ways of looking at things. He questions a principle of power and goes on living and laughing happily. In the Czech art scene, Surůvka represents a shift of the art’s and the artist’s social function away from 1960’s and 1970’s culture and from the postmodern way of the 1980’s. It is a shift that has been brought about by certain sickness with culture and politics. Even from the center’s esthetic viewpoint, Surůvka is perceived (complete with his local scene) as a moral alternative and positive negation.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPages 8 and 9, Warlords I-VI, 1996-97, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm*Pages 10 and 11, Left: Warlords I-VI, 1996-97, acrylic on canvas, 100 x 70 cm and Drunk driver, acrylic on oil paint by S. Novotná, 90 x 100 cm*Batman\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"English","offer_id":46505792143611,"sku":"","price":99.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Czech","offer_id":46505792176379,"sku":"","price":99.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/ab37f923911780e05b1a291e39ca7c1f.jpg?v=1726096888"},{"product_id":"zapletalova-veronika","title":"Veronika Zapletalová: Piveček Forest Park","description":"\u003cp\u003eCzech\u003cbr\u003e40 pages, 24 x 34 cm\u003cbr\u003ePhotographs: Veronika Zapletalová\u003cbr\u003eTranslation: Jan and Alex Pivečkovi (German)\u003cbr\u003eTranslation: Daniel Ziss (English)\u003cbr\u003eTranslation: Helena Dušková, Malka Jakubowicz, Emilie Djiboghlian (French)\u003cbr\u003eScanning, photo editing, typesetting from Dynamo Grotesk font and preparation for print: DIVUS GRAFIKA [Blanka Brixová, Radka Johanidesová, Ivan Mečl, Jakub Němeček]\u003cbr\u003ePrinting: UNITISKIn Prague in 2000 published by ČSOP Zálesí in cooperation with Divus Publishing House\u003cbr\u003eISBN 80-86450-00-7\u003cbr\u003eThe author of the seven wolves is Stanislava Konvalinková,the author of the snake, the snail, the snail, the pipistrelle, the photographs and the book is Veronika Zapletalová\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe book is a subjective view of what happens in the forest.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThanks to all who helped me with the book. They are especially: Zdena Almerová, Jiří Bárta, Helena Dušková, Boženka Filáková, Robert Gall, Malka Jakubowicz, Oldřich Karban (for his work with the saw), Otakar Karlas, Zdenek Kutra, Zdenek Miklas, Alex Pivečka, Jan Pivečka, Václav Podestát, Martin Raudenský, my parents, Radek Studenka, Jindřich Štreit, Daniel Ziss\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn one of their forests on the outskirts of the town of Slavičín in southeastern Moravia, the Piveček family of shoemakers established a park in 1939. It was to be a memorial to Mrs. Josefa, wife of Jan and mother of Jan and Zdeněk Piveček. In addition to a playground for children, the park had a magic house, a pond, a wolf and several dwarfs with Little Red Riding Hood. The park was popular among children and adults until the late 1960s. The people of Slavičín used to relax and recuperate there while their children played on the playground. In later years, the forest park became deserted and deserted, until the forest under the old name of ‘Pod Obruby’ was created again in its place.\u003cbr\u003eAt the beginning of 1990, Jan Pivečka, the younger son of the Pivečka family, returned to his hometown after 44 years in the world. He decides to stay here and finds new friends among the local conservationists of the ‘Zálesí’ nature reserve. Talking with them, the idea of rebuilding the ‘Pod Obruby’ park is born. Members of the local sculpture symposium, Kurt Gebauer, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and his students, as well as the town of Slavičín, are involved in the design of the park. The acquisition of materials and the landscaping of the site would not have been possible without the help of the city administration, the Via Foundation, the Partnership Foundation, the Jan Pivečka Foundation and the Foundation for the Development of Civil Society. The Park Association, the fire brigade, volunteers, students, artists, neighbours, day trippers and random passers-by helped with the work in the park.\u003cbr\u003eGradually, the park in the forest above Slavičín was transformed into a magical meeting place for different people, united by serious play and the joy of rebuilding the park. The forest park is a place of dreams, where people create something new for themselves and their children.Veronika Zapletalová's photographs show the park in 1998-1999. Seven wolves made of oak wood by Stáňa Konvalinková. The author of the photographs is also the creator of a snake, a snail, a snail, a pipistrelle and a seal. The bridge over the pond was carved by Marek Borsanyi. Lenka Klodová and Marek Rejent designed the benches and Marek Rejent placed his wooden plates with animals in the park for a while. The condor was carved by Klaus Dobrunz. The as yet unnamed sandstone sculpture is the work of the well-known sculptor Mario Kotrba. Local materials were used for the work, massive oak and beech trees that were not felled but fell under the wind and their own weight.This book, like the park itself, is a work in progress. It is not intended to show the park as a closed work, but the idea behind its creation and its importance to the people who meet in it and work together to bring it to life in their own way. The book thus opens up a view of a space in which people from Slavičín and elsewhere can realise themselves in confrontation with their environment.\u003cbr\u003eOn the occasion of Jan Pivečka's 80th birthday, the park was renamed ‘Pivečka's Forest Park’ in 1999.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505792209147,"sku":"","price":10.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/lesop-obal_web.jpg?v=1745011140"},{"product_id":"zapletalova-veronika-1","title":"Veronika Zapletalová: Tubers","description":"\u003cp\u003eCzech\u003cbr\u003e22 photos,16 x 15cm\u003cbr\u003eText: Tomáš Pospěch\u003cbr\u003eEnglish: Ondřej Zapletal\u003cbr\u003eScanning, editing of photographs for print.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThanks to everyone who helped me with the book and the project.:Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, Blanka Brixová, Radka Johanidesová, Ota Karlas, Ondřej Kubišta, Martin Mikolášek, Aleš Kuneš, Ivan Mečl, Jaroslav Pecka, Jan Pivečka, Tomáš Pospěch, my parents, Jan Slovenčík, Ludvík Šenk, Ondřej Zapletal\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe exhibition was supported by: Gallery Pecka, KodakThe book was made with the support of Divus, Tomáš Bat'a Foundation, Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505792241915,"sku":"","price":8.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/rour-obal_web.jpg?v=1745009190"},{"product_id":"martin-zet-los-artistas-unidos-jamas-seran-vencidos","title":"Martin Zet: LOS ARTISTAS UNIDOS JAMÁS SERÁN VENCIDOS!","description":"\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t**\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"English","offer_id":46505792274683,"sku":"","price":9.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Czech","offer_id":46505792307451,"sku":"","price":9.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/c4f496c370bad8ccab086e765943ac60.jpg?v=1726096895"},{"product_id":"zet-martin-sea-drawings","title":"Zet Martin: Sea Drawings","description":"\u003cp\u003e56 pages, 14,5 x 17 cm\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCatalogue for the exhibition Kresbz mořem, Emil Filla Gallery, Ustí nad Labem, 17 November - 11 December 1999. Curator of the exhibition: Zbyněk Sedláček\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublished by the Union of Visual Artists of the Ústí Region \u003cbr\u003eTexts. Richard Drury, Jozef Cseres, M.Z.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Divus","offers":[{"title":"English","offer_id":46505792340219,"sku":"","price":6.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Czech","offer_id":46505792372987,"sku":"","price":6.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/Zet_kresby_web.jpg?v=1745005654"},{"product_id":"lenka-klodova-magazin-briza-birch","title":"Lenka Klodová: Magazín Bříza (Birch)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tczech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tA magazine of seductive exhilaration in this first erotic issue of its kind. Essentially a new and unexpectedly refined kind of sexual iconoclasm designed for perfect and one-hundred percent successful auto-eroticism. Between the lines you will also find here instructions on how to go about having a properly wild and dirty fling with the virginal and yet more experienced womb of nature. Condom not included. The great outdoors!\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tKlodová Lenka: Betyna, Prague 2000*Klodová Lenka: Adverts, Prague 2000*Klodová Lenka: Břízie, Prague 2000\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505792405755,"sku":"","price":69.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/24894ad88741bacc49f8e1cf1adcac1b.jpg?v=1726096902"},{"product_id":"lenka-klodova-magazin-kominy-chimneys","title":"Lenka Klodová: Magazín Komíny (Chimneys)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tenglish and czech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThis artist and editor-in-chieftress of the magazine Bříza (Birch) has come out with a new and original erotic project. It probably never occurred to you girls, but let’s just say you haven’t lived until you’ve experienced a fat, long and firm chimney inside of you. The magazine Komíny (Chimneys) offers you a fine selection to choose from. So let’s set off for the industrial zones for a thrill that will surely leave you sated.\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t16 pages, 21 x 30 cm\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tconception, photography, graphic design Lenka Klodová|prepress Lenka Klodová \u0026amp; DIVUS\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tpublished by DIVUS\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tThis magazine comes out on the occasion of Lenka Klodová exhibition|in MALÁ ŠPÁLOVKA Gallery, Národní 30, Prague 1 in October 2001. ISBN: 9788086450148\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505792438523,"sku":"","price":10.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/e6630a99c2f8ef2e586f0dd526abfd82.jpg?v=1726096904"},{"product_id":"josef-bolf-big-black-book","title":"Josef Bolf: big black book","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tText: Tomáš Pospiszyl\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tGraphic Design: Dita Lamačová a Ivan Mečl\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t120 pages on strong coated paper, hardcover and short story supplement\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSize: 33 x 22 x 2 cm\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPublished: 2009\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tISBN: cz-9788086450-44-5\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tISBN: en-9788086450-46-9\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t„Setting form and technique aside, let us focus on content and reaction. Since 2008, Josef Bolf has been recognized as a successful painter. For a country that has never been so pleasant to live in as now, this implies the popularity of a painter whose work features various catastrophes, moments of despair, depressing images of human solitude, and scenes of universal horror. Transcending common taste, he is attracted to horror—his work draws from comics, pop c ulture and even kitsch. These are strange preconditions for success and a strange face of culture, unless we believe that we most long for that which we lack, even though it may disrupt accepted values. In periods of prosperity, our civilization, like its historical predecessors, has focused on its dark side, morbidly relishing death and decay. Bolf can be placed in the tradition of artists, poets and rock stars who provide us with works of full of anxiety, destruction and perversion. Haunting and poignant, he is attractive. Sometimes he is an emotional blackmailer freely forthright about his methods, and we contentedly give in. As to the alluring power of Bolf’s recent work, his spectators empathize with the artist’s urge to dissect his own trauma; not only his personal demons, but those with which many spectators can also identify. Bolf does not so much speak for himself, as he does for an entire generation.“\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t...\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t„Each and every evening, millions of people attentively gaze at the flooded cellars of more than twenty families, or a car hugging a tree by the highway with everyone inside dead. Petty catastrophes are sometimes substituted by a great one - perhaps some unimaginable threat: mosquitoes carrying malaria or madmen putting razors in baby food. It is as if our civilization always requires new reasons to live in fear, constantly looking for scenarios of possible catastrophes. We are keen observers of distant misfortunes, comforted with a passing sense of security brought by the daily news.“\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t...\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003ci\u003eFrom text by Tomas Pospiszyl\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"English","offer_id":46505792471291,"sku":"","price":30.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Czech","offer_id":46505792504059,"sku":"","price":30.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/1af799a8502f68b6069166edca1454a7.jpg?v=1726096907"},{"product_id":"lenka-klodova-pregnant-songs","title":"Lenka Klodová: Pregnant Songs","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tenglish and czech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe woman, put on a pedestal by Western culture, is usually beautiful, naked and defenseless. Klodová argues against this ideal model of womanhood found in museums, galleries, advertisements and in European art history publications. Although Klodová demonstrates the absurdity of such presentations of womankind, her “ideal” is by no means an asexual woman warrior wearing blue stockings. The nakedness of a woman is not the opposite of freedom; motherhood is not the opposite of erotic desire and intellectual maturity.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t...\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tFrom text by Martina Pachmanová\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSince 1999, Lenka Klodová has been investigating the theme of women through the sensitive material of the pornography industry. Fascinating are the variety of ideas anchored in that one theme, the simplicity of the material, and constant invention in the field of method. Lenka devotes herself with the same seriousness to sculptural work as to paper-cutting; her works range from monumental realizations, like Miluji (I Love, 2001) in Neratovice, to flat “sculptures” made out of cardboard dressed up in tailored clothes, but there are also samizdat mystifications and body performances. All these methods of creation mingle with and complement each other. The work with porno-magazines is developed further in the samizdat magazines, Bříza (Birches, 2000) and Komíny (Chimneys, 2001). The new magazine Krásné holky v akci (Beautiful Girls in Action, 2004) complements the Miluji installation by rendering it ironic; it is a photo-essay in which Lenka and her friends, Helenka and Lucie, work on this sculpture while dressed as prostitutes. Wearing high heels and workers’ goggles they hammer wedges into monumental stone blocks, move them with a crane and grind at them with a hand grinder. It was as if they were constructing an advertisement for their erotic service. That adds another slightly ticklish dimension to the multivalent outcry “I love,” and the photo-documentation shifts the realization of a sophisticated art work to the level of a student prank. This is not the first time that such self-irony, something that seems to undermine artwork’s seriousness, appears in Lenka’s work.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t...\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tFrom text by Pavlína Morganová\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tScenes, 2001. In my imagination, porno-models attempt to balance their immoral vocation with godly work for children. In the stage-set pieces of a children’s puppet theatre they seem lost, uneasy and uncomfortable.*Heavy Industry, 2003. We are in Sweden, in the middle of a mountain that was hollowed out by mining. I miss my mommy. I feel like I am inside of her again. Later I express feeling much more grossly in glossy digital prints: the underground caverns are penetrated by Ostrava industrial chimneys. These are successful international economic contacts.*Autumn Night is Long only by its Name, 2001. Tirelessly and endlessly I cut out paper doilies to cover the naked bodies of prostitutes. As a profession, it is just as rhythmical and endless as theirs.****Living with Handicap, 2001, long-term performance about mermaid life away from the sea*Maids, 2001, painting on magazine, installation from a residence in Čimelice*Place of Pilgrimage, 2001, monumental lettering I LOVE (MILUJI), realization in a public space at Neratovice*Place of Pilgrimage, 2001, monumental lettering I LOVE (MILUJI), realization in a public space at Neratovice*Cared-for, 2001*Giving Birth, 2002, pull the string and a woman gives birth to a baby*Giving Birth, 2002, pull the string and a woman gives birth to a baby*\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505792536827,"sku":"","price":12.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/024db3140ef43aeac08769ce647ef761.jpg?v=1726096910"},{"product_id":"michel-gerard-alex-villar-alison-cornyn-mark-shepard-abdelali-dahrouch-jacques-roch-tony-roch-fairy-tales-1999","title":"Michel Gerard, Alex Villar, Alison Cornyn, Mark Shepard, Abdelali Dahrouch, Jacques Roch, Tony Roch: Fairy - Tales 1999","description":"\r\n            czech, english\u003cbr\u003eA document of one of the symposia in legendary Plasy. The art action this time was inspired by the fairy-tale under the guidance of curator Denise Carvalho. Represented in the catalogue are Michel Gerard, Alex Villar, Alison Cornyn, Mark Shepard, Abdelali Dahrouch, Jacques Roch, Tony Roch, Barabara Broughel, Erwin Redl, Dan Devine, Michael Crockeord, Stephanie Syjuco, Mare Tralla, Monika Brandmeier, Redas Dirzys, Martin Zet, Sovan Kumar, Bilijana P. Isijanin, Charlie Citron, Gail Pickering, Medime  Melissa Laing, Petr Nikl and others.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMartin Zet: Vertigo - manipulated video tape-projection - granary, November 14, 1999, Libušín*Erwin Redl: This Bud´s for you - This Void is yours - site specific installation, light, electronic - ganary, November 14, 1999, Libušín\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505792569595,"sku":"","price":6.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/111ae7d7adcdf3672064145689335859.jpg?v=1726096912"},{"product_id":"vit-havranek-bj","title":"Vít Havránek: bj","description":"\u003cp\u003eCzech, English\u003cbr\u003e20 pages, 22 x 20,5 cm\u003cbr\u003ePublished for the exhibition of BJ, BJ group in the Foundation and Centre of Contemporary Art Prague and Communication Centre Školská (Linhart Foundation). \u003cbr\u003ePublished by Studio Divus, Centre for Contemporary Art Prague and Gallery of the Linhart Foundation, 2000\u003cbr\u003eText: Vít Havránek\u003cbr\u003eLanguage proofreading: Dana Mikulejská\u003cbr\u003eTranslation: Vladan Šír\u003cbr\u003ePhotographs: Martin Polák, René Rohan, Martin Špalda, Vladimír Goralčík, Petr Baran, NG archive\u003cbr\u003eGraphic design: BJ, Andrea Slováková (Divus)\u003cbr\u003ePre-press preparation: Divus\u003cbr\u003ePrinting: UnitiskJan Šerých: \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCaptions: drawings, 1999*Josef Bolf: In the Bronx, 11. 2. 2000*Ján Mančuška: Chicken, 1999*Tomáš Vaněk: from the cycle Participy, 1999*Josef Bolf: Pako Fashion, acrylic on plastic, 1999*Ján Mančuška: 3+1, installation, Starter \u0026amp; \u0026amp; Sorter Gallery, 1999*Jan Šerých: drawings, marker on paper, 1999*Tomáš Vaněk: from the cycle Participy, spray on wall, Galerie Na perchýlku Brno, 2000\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505792602363,"sku":"","price":19.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/bj_cover_WEB.jpg?v=1745087075"},{"product_id":"roman-prahl-obsessed-by-drawing","title":"Roman Prahl: Obsessed By Drawing","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tCzech, German summary\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t168 pages, 22 x 31,5 x 1 cm\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tBy Roman Prahl\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tand Vladan Antonovič, Václav Hájek, Ondřej Chrobák, Luděk Jirásek, Lenka Kovaříková, Patrik Šimon\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tTranslated by Daniel Steinmetz\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tDesign: Kryštof Doležal\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tISBN 80-902379-9-1\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t**\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505792635131,"sku":"","price":10.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/d11d7748b9b3cbe681a35d5c67ae2e22.jpg?v=1726096918"},{"product_id":"ole-hagen-daniil-kharms-alexander-vvedensky-and-henri-michaux-dark-matter","title":"Ole Hagen, Daniil Kharms, Alexander Vvedensky and Henri Michaux: Dark Matter","description":"\r\n            english\u003cbr\u003eDaniil Kharms:\u003cbr\u003e\r\nA Shortish Gent\u003cbr\u003e\r\nThe Carpenter Kushakov\u003cbr\u003e\r\nThe Plummeting Old Women\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cbr\u003e\r\nDaniil Kharms \u0026amp; Alexander Vvedensky:\r\nThe Man with the Black Coat\u003cbr\u003e\r\nRussia’s Literature of the Absurd\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cbr\u003e\r\nHenri Michaux:\u003cbr\u003e\r\nDarkness Moves\u003cbr\u003e\r\nAn Henri Michaux Anthology: 1927 – 1984\r\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\nAll artwork by Ole Hagen\u003cbr\u003eA shortish gent with a pebble in his eye went up to the door of a tobacconist’s shop and stopped. His black polished shoes gleamed on the stone step leading up to the\r\ntobacconist’s. The toe-caps of his shoes were directed at the inside of the shop. Two more steps and the gentleman would have disappeared through the door.\r\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\nBut for some reason he dillydallied, as though purposely to position his head under the brick which was falling from the roof. The gentleman had even taken off his hat, baring his bald skull, and thus the brick struck the gentleman right on his bare head, broke the cranium and embedded itself in his brain.\r\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\nThe gentleman didn’t fall. No, he merely staggered a bit from the terrible blow, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, used it to wipe his face, which was all gooey from blood and brains, and turning toward the crowd, which had instantly gathered around the gentleman he said: - Don’t worry, ladies and gents: I’ve already had the vaccination. You can see – I’ve got a protruding pebble in my right eye. That was also once quite an incident. I’ve already got used to that. Now everything’s just fine and dandy!\r\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\nAnd with these words the gentleman replaced his hat and went off somewhere into the margins, leaving the troubled crowd in complete bewilderment.\u003cbr\u003e*******Drawings by Ole Hagen\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505792667899,"sku":"","price":12.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/b2d91b9fb5f0fa015c966ff30b203375.jpg?v=1726096920"},{"product_id":"jan-mancuska-t-texts","title":"Ján Mančuška: T (Texts)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tczech and english\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tContent:\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tAndy Warhol: From A to B and back again,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tEugéne Ionesco: The killer,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tEgon Bondy: Oh central Bohemia, diary of a girl seeking Egon Bondy,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tLévi-Strauss: Tristes tropiques,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPhilip K.Dick: The three stigmata of palmer eldritch,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tG.A.Effinger: When gravity fails,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tHans Belting: The end of art history,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tMarcel Proust: Remembrances of things past, time regained,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tDave Hickey: Air guitar, shining hours – forgiving rhyme,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tJosef Vondrášek: Texts of the group Jižní pól,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tAlbert Camus: The plague, The rebel,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t***Facing Pages\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505793880315,"sku":"","price":8.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/d413fcf1c48cab639a9a1e7df6b2cb86.jpg?v=1726096922"},{"product_id":"rafani-co14","title":"Rafani: CO14","description":"\r\n            czech\u003cbr\u003eContents:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\nOndřej Brody - Staropramen\u003cbr\u003e\r\nVáclav Magid - Max Švabinský\u003cbr\u003e\r\nJiří Franta - Meditation\u003cbr\u003e\r\nJakub Hošek - Like like the the the Death\u003cbr\u003e \r\nJiří Kovanda - Sausage immured\u003cbr\u003e\r\nSylva Francová, Věra Suchelová - Sylvinka a Věruška\u003cbr\u003e\r\nViktor Frešo - Closed\u003cbr\u003e\r\nIveta Dučáková, Pavla Gajdoštíková - Operation\u003cbr\u003e\r\nVladimír Skrepl - Here comes the sun\u003cbr\u003e\r\nKristýna Fistr - Interview\u003cbr\u003e\r\nJiří Thýn - Local area\u003cbr\u003e\r\nTelol 4, Pets\u003cbr\u003e\r\nRecord - On backyard by the twits\u003cbr\u003e\r\nJán Mančuška - This is not Art\r\nPetra Čiklová + Avděj Ter-Oganian - movies - fun- vodka\u003cbr\u003e\r\nVilém Balej, Dominik Herzán - Dead Nature\u003cbr\u003e\r\nJana Doubková a Petra Pětiletá - Stream of Desire\u003cbr\u003e\r\nMartin Rusina - ---\u003cbr\u003e\r\nOndřej Brody, Evžen Šimera - Lesson\u003cbr\u003e\r\nTelol 6, Viktor Frešo a spol. - Finale\u003cbr\u003e\r\nKW - Arabic\u003cbr\u003e\r\nJiří David - Wild\u003cbr\u003e\r\nJan Kadlec, Milan Salák - Videodocuments\u003cbr\u003e\r\nZbyněk Baladrán, Ján Mančuška - Fake document Vide\u003cbr\u003e\r\nRadek Macke - Home art workshop\u003cbr\u003e\r\nMichaela Gorcová, Petr Kout - Pheasant in Wine\u003cbr\u003e\r\nMagdaléna Peševová, Hana Poislová\u003cbr\u003e\r\nAvděj Ter-oganjan - interview\u003cbr\u003e\r\nJiří David - interview\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDedication***********************\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505793913083,"sku":"","price":4.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/0b0d7f25cba059d73cf1fb7509575e9e.jpg?v=1726096925"},{"product_id":"vit-soukup-marketa-soukupova-wedding-anniversary","title":"Vít Soukup \u0026 Markéta Soukupová: Wedding Anniversary","description":"\u003cp\u003eOn our wedding anniversary,\u003cbr\u003eMotto: \"If you want to know a dog - you must have a bitch!\" (J.John), ,\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWedding is a ritual that counts among the main moments of existence. Like all rituals, it serves to unite the will, direct action, harmonize souls, and achieve a general balance, both of physical and social forces. It is a ceremony that symbolically expresses the union of the body and soul of two people. However, this ceremony also establishes the status of marriage in their harmony. Francis Bacon said of marriage that it serves as a safeguard against sensuality, while natural sensuality is the impetus, so to speak, for marriage. The one should not exclude the other, but the status of marriage is not in itself sensual.,\u003cbr\u003eThen there is eroticism, a valuable lesson in the thermodynamics of sexual expression and repression. It awakens sexual arousal in our minds because our brains are pre-programmed as a trigger mechanism for sex hormones. This hardware is activated in our minds by a variety of stimuli that the brain has learned to associate with sexual challenges and opportunities.\u003cbr\u003eSo sex happens primarily in our minds, and pornography is really anything that turns us on. Even the dictionary defines pornography as written, pictorial, or any other form of communication intended to arouse sexual desire. By this definition, pornography does not preclude marriage at all, just as sexual desire, the undeniable source of life and procreation, does not preclude being a sacred and spiritual matter. But it should not be associated with violent impulses, only then does it become an obscene matter.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVit Soukup's new series of paintings is dedicated to the anniversary of his marriage to Markéta, celebrated not only with this exhibition but also with the birth of his son Václav. The erotic testimony of the 9 paintings in the cycle is based on 9 engravings made by Markéta based on Vít's drawings from porn magazines, followed by an ultrasound diary of the development and movement of the embryo. Eroticism is here linked to physicality and virtuality, and in this ambivalence lies its charm. The pictorial testimony is ambiguous, not counting the third part of the video footage. The painting, however, does not deny the artist's typical attention to detail as a method of revealing a reality that is at the same time object and fictional. The symbiosis of the real and the imagined is also expressed by the thematic connection between pornography and marriage, the relationship between the rituals of marriage and sex. The details of the female body, in compositional connection with visual material elements, such as decorative fabric, embroidery or a piece of ornament, lead to an abstract, asymmetrical, enlarged whole. However, even the small elements have an ambivalent effect - the heart is not only a kitsch from the pilgrimage, but also the engine of the pulse of life, the egg, which resembles genitals, hides the germ and symbol of the origin of life. The themes, drawn from porn magazines and the intimacy of real life, undergo a catharsis of creation, art here cleansing passions and covering faces. Rather, it reveals the products of the human mind as an object of collective ownership. Vít Soukup is not one of the painters who hesitate over a clean and empty surface; he does not begin with his own confession. He shares things and concepts with us as the subject of a common testimony. His paintings thus create a kind of still life, referring to our state of mind. Their bright colours spring from the comfort and joy he redistributes among us.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnti-sexists generally lack the love, tenderness, horniness or courage to be attracted to pornography. Yet, in this exhibition, on the occasion of their wedding anniversary, these are precisely what the two artists lack in their joint presentation. But what about us? If we don't also use our heads for our pleasure, eroticism, entertainment and growth of our personality, no one will do it for us. Sex is a matter of personal freedom and the nature of life, not oppression and violence. It is necessary to know which side to take. Just like Mae West said in the movie to a gunman with his fly bulging, \"You got a gun in there, or are you glad to see me ?\"...We should know how to answer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVlasta Čiháková-Noshiro\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505793945851,"sku":"","price":11.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/SOUKUPVYROCI_WEB.jpg?v=1745062129"},{"product_id":"vit-soukup-katalog-catalogue","title":"Vít Soukup: Katalog (Catalogue)","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tEnglish and Czech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tDorka of Pláně,\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tHer Magazines and Now Her Catalogues\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tJiří Ptáček\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tI\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tTo have a catalog of one’s own is one of the vain desires of visual artists. When a catalogue is released, an artist rejoices: he has been noticed, classified, categorized – unequivocally catalogized. His rejoicing is not a matter of habit; the catalog is the confirmation of his expanding tendency and identity, the same kind of fetish that Narcissus discovered for himself in his pond. “This then, is me. Here I am, and this is who I am. My works will disperse, but the catalog shall remain.”\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tII\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSimilarly, a business company in the era of advanced capitalism absolutely has to have its catalog. With the dream of profit and the terror of competition, it focuses on revealing all the weaknesses of the potential customer, using the catalogue to ingratiate itself to the customer’s taste. A catalogue does not ostensibly bother the customer, but does attack him subliminally, creating the illusion that both parties share a common interest: the customer’s own well-being. The happy customer (no longer a potential one) eventually puts the catalogue aside – when it no longer offers anything the customer does not already have by this time. And if a catalogue should fall into one’s hands that fails to address one’s weaknesses, the whole process can be even faster: it simply goes to the recycle bin directly. Companies are aware of the transitory quality of their publications, and resignedly prepare new editions. Thus, while an artist’s catalogue as a rule has the potentiality to participate in historical and social “immortality”, a commercial catalogue is happy to address the next afternoon of shopping. We have one word for both of them, but we mean different things.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIII\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tVít Soukup has his first large art catalogue, and it features canvases depicting a commercial catalogue. What made him dedicate his first “dab at immortality” to the ephemeral world of “great bargains and discounts”? I have the suggestion of an answer ready, and if I were delivering a speech, I would introduce it with a dramatic pause. But as it is, I will divert the reader’s attention, and leave the answer for the ending. To those who are reluctant to follow the precarious arc of my narration, the cracking and crumbling of the text, I recommend them to skip the following and go straight to section VII. It will save them the long-windedness and their time – that is to say money.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIV\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe latitude is 48° 46’ 39“ and the longitude is 14° 25’ 7“ in the village of Dolní Pláně. Wedged between the wooded hills Horní Háj, Hůra, Kraví Hora and Poluška it is like any other place in the hilly South Bohemian borderlands. One may take the northeast direction towards Český Krumlov, or linger in the neighboring valley, which stretches to Velešín and to the pilgrim village St. John upon Malše, poised atop the feminine-shaped knoll. At the beginning of the 1970s, Soukup’s parents bought a cottage in Dolní Pláně. They chose to spend the summers away from the city, like tens of thousands of other Czechoslovaks of their time. Vít Soukup would spend his summer vacations here, slowly evolving into a painter, filmmaker and writer. Today one would hardly recognize that he is not a local. At the village dances in the neighboring village of Věžovatá Pláň, or in nearby Zubčice and Markvartice the talk sometimes turns his way; he is spoken of as a decent boy, the strange painterly fellow, the recovered alcoholic. That his good reputation does not limit itself to the artistic circles of Prague is something they are only beginning to discover. As is the world that Soukup takes into account in his work. Surprisingly, they are learning about their own universe, of the village, of the periphery, of their outsider status.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tV\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tVít Soukup’s oeuvre can be characterized by one constant feature: the bond of botched handicraft and failure in the life in the name of an intellectual commentary on lifestyle and aesthetic values. His diction is a mixture of irony and compassion. Among other examples of this attitude we might first cite Soukup’s fumetto series Radka Likes to Date \/ Radka ráda randí, created for Umělec magazine between 1998-99. In this a young artist named Radka is going through both a personal and a professional crisis, and moves into the “heart of the Novohradské Hory” where, next to her simpleminded but noble and refined boyfriend Honza, she “realizes” the simplicity and the importance of the value of love.1 What is significant here: the romance is fulfilled through a subversive satire of clichés of the artistic milieu, of which Soukup himself is a part. Another example is the series of wooden objects from Soukup’s country garden in Dolní Pláně. These were unexpectedly included in Soukup’s large retrospective A Posthumous Exhibition \/ Posmrtná výstava (2003). Soukup had the rickety wooden vehicles transported to the House of Arts in Zlín, and there “reconstructed” them. He monumentalized this childish work of arte povera into a powerful artifact ironically glorifying exhibitions. Soukup often applies a similar “aggrandization” in his painting. In his series Techno (1999) he reconstructed illustrations from didactic magazines for teenagers into gigantic oil paintings that oscillated between the style of Mark Rothko and the sensibility of Jeff Koons. Quotes from the history of art were not alien to him, and yet still could not mask the fact that it is not merely a meditation on painting or global pop populism, but a damnable humanistic intrusion into the everyday life of our prefabricated, middle\/class, Bakelite, “do it yourself” culture. Soukup likes to create the Czech variation of Pop Art – concentrating on consumer products, but those that are symptomatic for the local dynamic of social changes. He will concentrate precisely on those reproductions that have faded and turned into cheap prints; they demonstrate all the more clearly how cheaply produced is the chimera of consumerism and technological progress. He concentrates on objects that bear evidence that both our former and present ideals do not exceed the minuscule proportions of our Czech Valley, and yet are capable of looming above the horizon of our minds, becoming our fate. Soukup consistently paints entirely in oils and with respect to the model, thus becoming a follower of similarly faded, model-enslaved and baroque second-rate artists (and even the few first-rate ones) whose paintings still crowd our minor churches and chapels. We could go on citing examples, the lost pastel paintings based on Rumcajs, or the several series of small oil paintings on roughly cut wooden blocks featuring motifs of regional and normalization-era periodicals. We would then arrive to the series Dorka 2 (2003), in which Soukup again searched for the abstract aesthetic of modernist painting (this time aided by knitting magazines inherited from his mother) but eventually could not resist the branches of the Dolní Pláně conifers, and the petite paws of a local cat. But in fact that leads us to repeat, a propos of everything again and again: we are the world’s outsiders, and it is worse to deny this than to admit it. Our experience grows out of the polyphony of theses, discourses, and ideals as well as from the parallel “ornament” of our personal preferences, irresponsibility and sentiments. Ideals sell out, and give way to the “little joys”, emotional instability as well as the conditions of our social macrocosms. And we will be able to say that this is bad or good only with our eyes closed. 2\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tVI\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tWe must not ignore the fact that Soukup’s work has features of personal mythology and spirituality. However, a more significant factor is the system of codes of “realization of shared experience” that the chosen sources of inspiration manifest. Via periodicals such as ABC, Květy, Dorka, the daily Český Krumlov Pages, or cheap westerns, Soukup does not open gates towards a nostalgic sentiment towards the 1980s and to local comics3, but to the experiences that we have in common and that we will never manage to shake off. The advantages granted to Czech artists by the unified and uniform history of our country after the Second World War and the relatively recent post-socialist diversification are currently appreciated by a wide range of Czech artists.4 Vít Soukup does not imply that we should, as a matter of principle, shudder with horror at our limitations, nor to go all willy-nilly regarding our inalienable identity and authenticity. Soukup’s canvases, like his films, merely state the paradox of our balancing act on the twin crutches of mind and body. Managed, of course, with a great amount of nuanced taunting of one against the other. If he does so “in his own name, in the name of his fallen spirit and in the name of his time limited body, for himself as painter and filmmaker”, he gains an indisputable alibi in the sense that he does not exclude himself from this system. For in truth, an attitude so frequently repeated cannot be an accompaniment of some essentially based obsession.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tVII\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe most recent series Catalogue is characterized more than others by a certain impetuosity. Soukup has never worked with such frantic haste. Colors blur more than ever, and unsolidified they yield themselves to new interpretations. Objects represented here, with few exceptions, do not appear to be based on photographs. But these exceptions only demonstrate anew Soukup’s reluctance to work on solitaires. The series, or the cycle, is his medium. Implying that a story is running through the paintings, asserting that the subject matter has not been chosen randomly, but with the awareness of the task to communicate and persuade the viewer of the significance of the theme. The paintings in Catalogue capture a choice of goods we may encounter in any broadsheet of the OBI domestic utensils chain. Consumer goods lacking in quality, but overpowering through sheer volume. Vít Soukup records this as if peripherally, in passing. The colorful patterns and compositions of the objects often serve as the pretext for losing control over the physical reality of these objects – this is the case here in several instances. For example, a flower breaks free from the wallpaper – or is it fabric? – thus emancipating itself and blossoming as the illusion of a natural plant. Again, it is in the exceptions where Soukup conclusively illuminates that we are not in a hypermarket, but perhaps at our mailbox, leafing through fliers and assorted junk mail. We are implicated in the situation of people who are showered with kilotons of an explosive mixture of discounts and bargains. Who are these imaginary people? Perhaps I will not stray too far from truth by saying that, at least sometimes, all of us are. Commercial catalogues are sometimes thrown straight away, and sometimes kept until the next shopping expedition. But sometimes we stare agape at their lurid clowning, for we understand it so well. It is inherent to us… we must shop, since, due to some unfathomable instinct we still want to. Vít Soukup has sacrificed his first art catalogue to the song of its ephemeral catalogue sister. Still, upon the foam of its singing organ, there now and then glitters the reflection of our longing for beauty, comfort and happiness, which resonates in “our” painter, both warming the heart and embarrassing us.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPage 2*Page 4 and 5*Page 6 and 7*Page 10 and 11*Page 20 and 21*Page 22 and 23*Page 28 and 29*Page 32 and 33*Page 36 and 37*Page 40 and 41*Page 42 and 43*Page 46 and 47*Page 52 and 53*Page 54 and 55*Page 58 and 59*Page 64 and 65*Page 66 and 67*Page 68 and 69\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505793978619,"sku":"","price":8.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/6e752915b92e7a42624241bf6ff715b5.jpg?v=1726096931"},{"product_id":"susanne-schuda-keeping-ones-distance","title":"Susanne Schuda: Keeping One's Distance","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tenglish or german\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIN SCHUDA’S WORLD\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tthe spiritual in Susanne Schuda’s The Cell\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSusanne Schuda’s art features the self-assertion of the individual within society and with a constructed reality. By means of exaggeration, pointed emphasis, reconstruction of familiar elements and the deformation of the habitual, the mechanisms the individual is exposed to become perceptible. In the beginning, constraints and fears of the human being as well as wishes and hopes associated with them were influenced by religions, ideologies and philosophies of life. Meanwhile, these “grand narrations” have been reduced to absurdity and replaced by the reality construction of the media. In the consumer craze that goes hand in hand with this development, body and psyche of the human being are successfully merchandised. Pseudo- religious concepts of a better life as well as manifold power and violence structures determine the new contexts. I Every religion regulates to protect the body and prohibits physical abuse. This may also be misunderstood as a basis for a long and happy life. The promised paradise turns out to be unattainable, so we have to realise it here on Earth. The struggle for eternal youth and a successful life is evident in the accumulation of material values and the intensive occupation with appearances. Religious or esoteric elements constitute a spiritual, ideological background for the treatment of our body. Through our own existence, we become creators and try to outdo God whom we have created ourselves.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSusanne Schuda’s art is located in this field of tension. However, her position is neither admonitory nor oriented towards something primal. In fact, she creates a functioning parallel world consisting of familiar set pieces with an uncanny and repulsive effect. The familiar has transformed itself to something monstrous. In her work The Cell, Susanne Schuda presents a multimedia installation that transfers the exhibition space into a sacred situation. The cell as the indispensable building block of life is at the centre of this worship. Only one hundredth of a millimetre across, only recognisable under the microscope, the cell ensures that an organism is at all viable. Only specialists can explore how it works. A stunned lay person is helpless in face of its transformations.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe artist gives this enigma a spiritual background and employs a fictional narrative structure, in which the protagonists My Mother, Whoreson and The King reflect on the issue in dialogic form. They recite their stereotypical clichés like a mantra. These figures have lost their actual identity.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThey represent positions which either become effective in one person at the same time or prevail in one case or another. All of them are somehow connected with the pro liferation of cells which is considered to be supreme. It is possible to accept this proliferation as a given fact – there is no reason to oppose it, it is rather regarded as a new chance. In any case, there is a reference to an abandonment to God. The King matches this way of thinking most closely. He has advanced into higher spheres. There he devotes himself to collective proliferation. My Mother still seems to believe in Botox, Pilates and Size Zero. She seals herself off and is concerned with the sanctuary of her body. She rebels against dissolution, even though she too has already lost. Whoreson, who is at odds with his life, is aware of the inevitability of the development – eventually of the proliferation – and tries to bear witness. As photographer he documents the processes that go hand in hand with the transformation. His bearing witness is a religious act, just like the battle My Mother is willing to fight. The King has decided to abandon himself as much as possible and will thus – at least in his own view – become the Enlightened One, the Messiah.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIt is clearly recognisable how the protagonists move as mirror-images of western capitalist behaviour. The religious element is marked by a certainty that is, however, no longer there and seems to be blurred. The aim is an obsessive holding on to the senseless which is paradoxically mistaken as the basics.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tIn our life, the media have made an image of the body – for a better life. Schuda’s figures try to follow up on this “promise of salvation“ and end up in increasingly absurd invocations. They have stopped trying to conciliate the cell – My Mother not entirely. With her protagonists, Susanne Schuda has already gone a step further and draws conclusions from the real, present development. Thus she deliberately makes use of the history of the body’s image – not only with regard to art, but with regard to the general view of the human body as such.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSo the art of Modernism presents us with the deformed, manipulated and destroyed body. The beau ideal following antiquity was suddenly considered to be obsolete. This ideal was taken up and perverted In totalitarian systems such as Fascism, which glorified strong, athletic and healthy bodies. In contrast, Modernism has replaced it by a deconstructivist, analytical concept. Influenced by the capitalist media society, we have again distanced ourselves from Modernism and are pursuing grotesque physical ideals, which Susanne Schuda meets with mockery and a striking formal quality.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tGünther Holler-Schuster, 2009\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tPage 6*Page 7*Page 13*Page 30 and 31*Page 40*Page 42*Page 50*Page 57*Page 61*Page 92*Page 94\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"English","offer_id":46505794142459,"sku":"","price":10.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"German","offer_id":46505794175227,"sku":"","price":10.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/28f99703ed96951aedb727e415e23111.jpg?v=1726096934"},{"product_id":"simon-barker-six-punks-dead","title":"Simon Barker (SIX): Punks Dead","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tIn 1976, when I moved into the St. James Hotel in London, I bought myself one of the cheapest pocket cameras available. Fully automatic, with no controls or settings, it just required a simple slot-in film cartridge. An idiot could use it – and I did.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tI knew I did'nt want to be like other photographers, so I chose never to take a black and white photograph or focus the camera. Subconsciously I concentrated on the women and artists at the heart of what would later be known as 'punk' in London.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tWomen such as JORDAN, SIOUXSIE, DEBBIE JUVENILE, TRACIE O’KEEFE, ARI UP, POLY STYRENE and NICO\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tArtists and writers such as MALCOLM MCLAREN, HELEN WELLINGTON-LLOYD aka HELEN OF TROY, BERTIE MARSHALL aka BERLIN and DEREK JARMAN.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe book PUNK’S DEAD is a product of that camera and those times - my family album covering the years 1976 to 78. The photos you see in it were all unplanned, spur of the moment shots taken by myself for myself and, up until now, with never a thought given to publication. In over thirty years, they have only been seen by a handful of close friends. I used to think they weren’t good enough to show people. Now I think they are almost too good.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSIX aka SIMON BARKER\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tI DON’T WANT TO BE LIKE ANYONE ELSE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHY OF SIMON BARKER (AKA SIX)\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tMichael Bracewell\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThe youth cultural phenomenon known as punk, the extent of which purists now date as having lasted in the UK for little more than fourteen months, between 1976 and 1977, can be seen in retrospect to have held a mirror up to the expectations and ambitions of all those whom it touched. To some, punk was Class War and the fight of Left against Right – a re-run of the Spanish Civil War in the brutalist and deliquescent Britain of the pre-Thatcher 1970s; to others, it was an avant-garde fashion parade: a damply British reclamation of the Zurich Dada or the Ballets Russes. And to yet others it was the gleeful and determined desecration of rock music’s Church of Authenticity, in which was worshipped the sanctity of the Blues. To Malcolm McLaren, speaking shortly before his death in 2010, if punk could have any claim on historical or historic status, it would best be remembered as “like doing the Twist in a ruin.” All of these definitions have iconoclasm and confrontation at their heart, and also the causes of youth and newness. And from this punk acquires a further definition: that in its games with acceleration and deceleration, in its perverse fusions of tradition, English quaintness and science fictional strangeness, it appeared to confront the stagnation of cultural consumerism – by describing, in a cartoon-like language of self-parody, the notion of modernity itself reaching critical mass and, unsurprisingly, imploding. Hence perhaps the slogan above of the door of the ‘SEX’ boutique at 430 Kings Rd. Chelsea: ‘Modernity Killed Every Night’.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tFor Howard Devoto – co-founder of Mancunian punk pioneers, Buzzcocks – the question was both more emotional and more philosophical: the movement had been a device for ‘trouble-shooting modern forms of unhappiness.’ While for the artist and film-maker Derek Jarman, in his uneasy punk fantasy ‘Jubilee’ (a non-punk film that included some punk people) the violence of punk was filmically related to both the lineage of Leftist cinema (the political allegories of Lindsay Anderson) and the neo-Romantic ‘Englishness’ conjured up in the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tThese are all strong and emotive themes; and clearly, for all its assertion of nihilism, negativity and pantomime anarchy, punk was also richly creative, pro-intellectual, politically aware and more inclined towards elitist and exclusive romanticism than a socialist dream of the culturally orthodox. And in this lay punk’s vitality as a catalyst – enabling the conversion of disaffection into a multi-allusive individualism, which by definition was always going to be short-lived.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tSimon Barker was a key witness and participant within the immediate pre-history and originating energy of punk. His photographs share with Nan Goldin’s early studies of the New York and Boston sub-cultures of the 1970s, a profound and still joyously audacious sense of youth going out on its own into new freedoms and new possibilities. In this, Barker’s photographs from this period capture a moment when the tipping point between innocence and experience has yet to be reached. The model and sub-cultural celebrity Jordan, for example, is photographed as a self-created work of art – her features a nigrescent Picasso, her clothes more post-war English county librarian. The incisive provocation of her image remains untamed and unassimilated, nearly forty years later; and within her surrealist pose there is the triumph of art made in the medium of sub-cultural lifestyle. The sites of punk’s war with the world are now well trodden, and histories proliferate – most particularly in an oral and anecdotal form. There is the sense that punk was a moment of raised consciousness for those who were caught in its cyclone and, as such, the movement has become both a rallying point for a generation and a subject of historical fascination. How might the image-satiated culture of late post-modernity rediscover the cold bright sparseness, dereliction and decay that comprised both the inspiration and the host environment of punk’s aggressive modernity? Simon Barker’s photographs from this period are a rare and intimate account of punk’s ability to mint newness. They are also in their way classic portraits of youth – adventures close to home, and the cool stillness of seeming to live beyond the end of history.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tForeword and St James Hotel by Sixjordan black patent st. james hoteljordan lindsay kemp jubilee kiss*jordan lindsay kemp jubilee kiss*jordan black patent st. james hotel*Seditionaries*debbie juvenile shop girls seditionaries*Siouxsie*siouxsie jordan monroe eye patch st. james hotel*Live*poly styrene x ray spex\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505794207995,"sku":"","price":35.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/9f8efdea2d300e3634a65a4ff299ff97.jpg?v=1726096937"},{"product_id":"michal-vimmer-96-hours-on-the-perch-farm","title":"Michal Vimmer: 96 Hours on the Perch Farm","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tczech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tWacky stories of a bunch of chemical transcendetals as they search for justice and balance in life. The book promotes free life style, disrespect for state authorities and drug abuse.\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t********************\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505794961659,"sku":"","price":7.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/66eecf55c70809ceef0d0cf5eef989d2.jpg?v=1726096962"},{"product_id":"s-d-ch-varlen-no-1-2-3-or-diary-of-prosaic-distress","title":"S.d.Ch.: Varlén No. 1.2.3. or Diary of prosaic distress","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tczech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t*****\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505795354875,"sku":"","price":5.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/1dd383797ef38e20fe76a7975d54f159.jpg?v=1726096972"},{"product_id":"s-d-ch-red-amadeus-or-the-life-of-baroque-superman","title":"S.d.Ch.: Red Amadeus or The Life of Baroque Superman","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t\u003cstrong\u003eczech language only\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t \u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505795420411,"sku":"","price":10.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/77300f4026f0acfd401e99510fb8897b.jpg?v=1726096975"},{"product_id":"s-d-ch-varlen-no-4-5-6-or-diary-of-prosaic-distress","title":"S.d.Ch.: Varlén No. 4.5.6. or Diary of prosaic distress","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tczech\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\/komix at the edge of existence\/\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t**********\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46505795453179,"sku":"","price":7.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/2d248ef6eb01b2b8ab8de9f64c78cad6.jpg?v=1726096980"},{"product_id":"mad-meg-factual-tales","title":"Mad Meg: Factual Tales","description":"\u003cp\u003e\r\n\tVyšlo česky, francouzsky nebo anglicky v oddělených publikacích\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t136 stran pohádkových komiksů pro dospělé na kvalitním papíře\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t12 x 16 x 1,5 cm\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\t\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\tISBN: 978-80-86450-55-1\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\r\n\t\u003cspan style=\"color:#ff0000;\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003ca href=\"http:\/\/divus.cc\/london\/en\/article\/mad-meg\"\u003eAbout Mad Meg\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n","brand":"publishig-house-divus","offers":[{"title":"English","offer_id":46505795485947,"sku":"","price":11.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"French","offer_id":46505795518715,"sku":"","price":11.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true},{"title":"Czech","offer_id":46505795551483,"sku":"","price":11.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/files\/85fd7cde635b9c9f5c18b1743ef7ce3e.jpg?v=1726096985"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0689\/9266\/3803\/collections\/01_books.svg?v=1726099820","url":"https:\/\/divus.cz\/de\/collections\/books.oembed?page=6","provider":"DIVUS","version":"1.0","type":"link"}