Jesper James Alvaer

The topicality of Alvaer’s work is based on a thoughtful observation of reality. In his paintings reality serves as a narrative to which he connects his own sparing dramaturgy. He selects media that are appropriate to the situation but is not dominated by them. By observing the image of reality he has acquired several variables that recur throughout his work and that he regards from different angles and thanks to which he operates by means of an ongoing self-education. From the straightforward videos Birds, Oranges, Draw a Lineand Follow, and Bus Stop, which reflect reality in a subtle way using gentle humour he has moved through his collaboration with Isabela Grosseová to research methods and procedural projects, the outputs of which usually contain a multilayered testimony graded by the degree of work involved.

“I realise that it is genuinely needed and regard it as a personal challenge to create in Prague an exhibition that will be really bad so as to forestall possible expectations and draw attention to the format of the exhibition itself.” (Jesper Alvaer, 2009, Jelení Gallery, 257)

One of the first joint projects organised by Jesper Alvaer and Isabela Grosseová was Transculture: Act 1 (2006). The exhibition format corresponded to the results of the process regardless of the anticipated form. Reacting to the request by the Polish gallery Bunkier Sztuki the artists created an investigative probe into countries defining the borders of Europe (Part 1: Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Morocco and Egypt). As well as the imported artefacts and exhibits from Czech collections, five guests remained for the duration of the exhibition that the artists got to know during the course of their travels around Northern Africa.

Another joint project that resonated intensely was the publication of Representation of the Nation (2007) and its subsequent reissue as Erratum (2008). Five thousand copies of a sixty-page newspaper (on-line: www.reprezentacenaroda.cz) contained an extensive declaration by the directors of all regional galleries on the future development of the institutions under their control. A subtle hint of the subversive nature of the material was a certain similarity of the language of individual respondents and the unexpectedly critical, engaged tone of the texts. The texts were not by the heads of the galleries (whose authentic statements are available at http://www.reprezentacenaroda.cz/archiv/), but had been downloaded and translated from eipcp.net and used for the creation of a discourse as ready-made.

(The project) examines the question of what role cultural institutions play in the creation of our self-realisation as a national unit.