About the project
CZEN
Artlist — Center for Contemporary Arts Prague

David Krňanský

First Name
David
Surname
Krňanský
Born
1987
Birth place
Praha
Place of work
Praha
Website
http://davidkrnansky.tumblr.com/
Keywords
CSU Library
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About artist

David Krňanský studied at the Jiří Kovanda performance studio at the Faculty of Art and Design of the University of Jan Evangelist Purkyně (FUD UJEP) in Ústí nad Labem, and at the painting studio led by Jiří Černický and Marek Meduna at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. He has made a name for himself over the last four years as a multi-media artist creating drawings, installations, new media and installations in public space. However, he is primarily a painter who struggles with the fundamental issues and challenges of said discipline in his works. He avoids conceptualism and links up a modernist visuality with the abstract present.

In his studio at MeetFactory, David Krňanský is at present painting geometric images in which he deals with colour and compositions. On a monochrome background he struggles to encapsulate the expression of the painting without an initial idea of the eventual outcome. This he does not deem important, and there is no sense in looking for other content in his current output, since he is only interested in paintings devoid of concept or theme. He adds content to his canvases only when preparing an exhibition, when he reflects upon how the viewer will perceive the paintings and what the individual paintings mean when taken as a whole.

Large series have resulted from his gradual resolution of painterly problems, such as BLACKOUTUtopia and NOT DEF.

Utopia was exhibited in 2017 at the Leto Gallery, Warsaw. It is a free composition on a monochrome background with a modernist structure. The title plays with the ambiguity of “utopia of modernism” and “we no longer concern ourselves with utopia”.

NOT DEF was presented in the same year at Gallery 101, Prague. It involves paintings based on the principles of abstraction. In fact, they have the empty rectangles painted on them that appear in a text file when a computer does not support a particular font. Krňanský here enriches the familiar theme of the empty rectangle with the impossibility of communication. The void takes on the attributes of silence.

Similarly, in 2011–13 Krňanský worked with the smiley symbol (e.g. at the exhibition  Barevné léto / Colourful Summer at the Jelení Gallery in 2013). Against a monochrome or gestural background a symbol appeared, a grimace of emptied anonymous emotion that caricatured the painting itself. The struggle between abstraction and abstracted communicative shortcuts and the question of turning communication away from personal written messages into a visual recording is more pressing.

The world and its communication is changing rapidly, and we are unable to react in time. It doesn’t matter what handwriting we have or whether we even still know how to write by hand. We have emoticons, likes, photos, etc., words stop making sense and our communication is based on impressions and feelings about what it should look like. We click on “like” because we want to follow it, we don’t care whether we really like it or whether we’re scared of it. “I like that“ means “I’m interested”. If someone doesn’t want to waste time, they send us a smiley, and their interest is piqued, we see black rectangles.… notdef …

We share, multiply, empty.

In the project Sedmiruký kouzelník / Seven-Handed Magician created for the Futura Gallery in 2015, Krňanský interrogated what the collective memory looks like these days. He first addressed the internet and post-internet world in his curatorial blog, in which he was above all interested in sharing, reflecting and emptying content. What happens to information when it goes wild on social media?

Sedmiruký kouzelník was a visual transformation. Polystyrene shelves, the figure of a magician, carved faces, aluminium plates with anti-spray finish – nothing is real, everything is both a backdrop and a barrier, an incomprehensible and unreal world. Krňanský undertook a project with a similar theme for the Gallery SPZ in 2015 at the exhibition Showroom.

Krňanský’s works vary depending on the current development of communications, but his characteristic structures remain. For him, modernity remains an inspiring source of ideas, even though these days it is more a utopia. 

Author of the annotation
Romana Veselá

Published
2018

CV

2011–2017
Vysoká škola umělecko-průmyslová v Praze, ateliér malby Jiřího Černického a Marka Meduny 2010–2011 Fakulta umění a designu Univerzity Jana Evangelisty Purkyně v Ústí nad Labem, ateliér performance Jiřího Kovandy 

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions
2017
David Krnansky: David Krnansky, Leto Gallery, Waršava
Everything is Nice / Bon Appetite, Ivan Gallery, Bukurešť (s Martinem Lukáčem)
BHG: Krysí Díra, studio Romana Výborného, Praha
BHG: Krysí Díra, byt na Chodově, Praha

2016
Never Stop 2, City Surfer Office, Praha (s Juliem Reichelem)
Black Hole Generation / Pure Hate, Nevan Contempo Gallery, Praha
Black Hole Generation / The Kings Are Back, The Dot Project Gallery, Londýn
Black Hole Generation / Nuance Freshovosti, LETO Gallery, Waršava

2015
Sedmiruký kouzelník, Futura, Praha
Never Stop 1, Berlínskej model, Praha (s Juliem Reichelem)

2014
Showroom, SPZ Gallery, Praha
Imagine a naked Girl Sitting on the Stool Between Us, Fotograf Gallery, Praha (s Juliem Reichelem)
No New History, Galerie Ve Středu, Plzeň (s Juliem Reichelem)

2013
Madness Becomes Method, Entrance Gallery, Praha
Barevné léto, Galerie Jelení, Praha
Karpet, Galerie 207, Praha
Group exhibitions not included in ARTLIST.
2016
České malířství dvacátého prvního století, Měsíc ve dne, České Budějovice

2015
Black Horses, Adam Gallery, Brno
VII. Zlínský salon mladých, 14/15 Baťův institut, Zlín
Smart Generation, Galerie NTK, Praha
BHG (BLACK HOLE GENERATION), UM Gallery, Praha
Typography, Czech Center, Rotterdam
The Best Taylor in Town, Hunt Kastner Gallery, Praha

2014
Spot, Galerie NTK, Praha
Art and Shadow, Galerie NoD, Praha

2013
Paper obsessed+2, Dvorak Sec Contemporary, Praha
Collections
Adam Gallery, Fait Gallery, Havrlant Art Collection, sbírka Patrika Šimona, sbírka Pavla Turka, Emmanuel Hervé Art Collection, soukromé sbírky v Anglii, USA a Polsku

Monography

Articles

Art + Antiques: Jiří Ptáček: David Krňanský. Prosinec 2015
http://www.artcasopis.cz/clanky/david-krnansky

Personal texts not included in database

http://artalk.cz/2017/11/13/black-hole-generation-krysi-dira/
http://artalk.cz/2016/12/07/bhg-manifest/

Video

Photo

Center for Contemporary Arts Prague www.fcca.cz 2006–2024
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