Radim Labuda

After completing his studies at the Faculty of Architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava, Labuda went on to research conceptual art procedures and new media at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. After what proved to be an important study trip to the Art Institute in San Francisco (2004), his medium of choice and the locus of his reflections became video. The image processed and shifted in various different ways is the basis of his installations, in which he examines a wide range of topics, from perception, presentation, objectification to ownership. His work combines the conceptual and the reflective, by which he examines his own creative and personal position, his means of expression, and the entire discipline of art, in an endeavour to be open to chance, interaction, collaboration and experience of the moment.

He thematises the very act of looking and observing. In staged, partly open situations he works with a social context and examines sexuality, physicality and identity. He draws on philosophy and sociology (Walter Benjamin, Vilém Flusser, Michel Foucault et al.) and regards art to be part of a wider political discourse. In 2008 his two-part social project Tihle: Společenská situace. Pět svázaných chlapů / These: Social Situation. Five Bound Boys and Ten druhý: Společenská situace / This Second: Social Situation won the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. He capped his subsequent study trip with another socially contextualised project Last Rover (V. Špála Gallery, 2009). Labuda also works with audio elements both created and found. He examines their spatial qualities and the interaction accompanying the creation of music (LoremIpsum I and II).

Another systematically explored theme emphasising fragmentation, repetition and retardation is time, be this in linear or circular form. Slowed down, almost painterly, compositions operate on the very boundary of video and photography. The openness of the situation is supported by its ambiguity, its extraction from the everyday, another experience of time and perception. The creation of open situations, creative contexts and artistic dialogues led Labuda naturally to curatorial and organisational activities (e.g. Videobus, 2006, a tour with the project ADD Soundsystem, 2008, Audiovisual –Světozor Cinema, and cooperation with the National Technical Library in Prague).

Váša, Ondřej, Špektákl se zavřenýma očima, Ateliér, č. 19, 2006, s. 16.

Švédová Blanka, Radim Labuda: Lorem ipsum I., (kat. výst.) 2008.

Tučková Kateřina, Radim Labuda, Art and Antiques, č. 12, 2008, roč. 7, s. 30-31.

Radim Labuda: Modelová studie/ Case study, (kat. výst.) 2009.

Radim Labuda, Destructive charakter, Galerie Jelení, 2010.

Skřivánek, Jan, Chalupáři podle Pěchoučka, Art and Antiques, č. 12, 2008, roč. 7, s. 8-9.

Chrobák, Ondřej, Manuál pro milovníky součassného umění (Lekce 3. - Cena Jindřicha Chalupeckého), Art and Antiques, č. 12, 2008, roč. 7, s. 71-71