Katerina Vincourova

Katerina Vincourova, born 1968 in Prague, is one of the most important Czech artists of the young generation. The exhibition New Heroes is her first solo exhibition in the Czech Republic since her return to Prague having completed a prestigious DAAD fellowhip in Berlin. Vincourova also holds the Czech Jindrich Chalupecky prize for young artists from the year 1997. With the installation of New Heroes, she develops her characteristically playful but at the same time critical take on the proliference of promotional objects in today's society. In her hands, these objects adopt out-size proportions, lending them a quality of aestheticised junk.

Her inflatable objects - a bottle, can, or tube of toothpaste for example - are placed in the mock intimacy of a forest scene in which their symbiosis with real nature is emphasised. Birch tree-trunk stumps from Prague's Stromovka Park (itself flooded this summer) are utilised with striking effect. Her large-scale cartoonish figures - the light bulb, mobile phone, carrot, and toothbrush - sit on these tree stumps around a campfire as if on thrones. With her typical humour and wry use of metaphor, Katerina Vincourova has created in this installation a micro-story concerning the situation in our endangered world. At first glance, it is the criticism of consumerism that strikes us, as well as her highlighting of the damage the environment is undergoing at present, but the work also holds other meaning. The artist has managed to identify the loss of human proportion and the vulnerability of personal identity. "I find it deeply degrading every time I witness these walking promotional objects with people inside them. I am disturbed that these objects have the opportunity to enter my field of vision," comments Vincourova. Her intimate forest becomes a marketing forum in which humanity is evoked without directly alluding to human consciousness. "The company of beings around a campfire, with all the associated romance and poetry that that scene brings to mind, is more powerful than the physical appearance of these beings themselves," says the artist, who aims in all her projects to create a unique atmosphere and strong feeling for the viewer. The new heroes of our time are, for Vincourova, consumer objects which identify the border or horizon between our desires and the unattainability of our dreams.

The gallery owner Jiri Svestka considers the humour of New Heroes to be one of its strongest aspects. "Katerina is able to directly attract a broad audience, not only through the social relevance and depth of meaning evident in her installations, but also via this use of humour and playfulness which can in itself be deeply provocative. She is one of only a few contemporary artists who can so successfully utilise this characteristic in order to speak to an audience that spreads beyond the confines of the typical art audience, as can be seen in the enormous attention that her work has always gained whenever we have shown it at the international art fairs." Pressetext

Katerina Vincourova - New Heroes