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Zuzana Vepřeková, Agáta Tichá a uživatelé rajče.net, kurátor Jiří Kovanda, Galerie AVU, Veletržní 61-63, Praha 7, 17.9 - 20.10. 2024
“Není nic lidštějšího než namalovat smějící se obličej na stěnu předtím, než bude celá natřená jednou barvou. Není nic lidštějšího než dívat se do mraku a zaznamenat každý jeho stav před rozplynutím. Rajče net je největší česká síť zaměřená na sdílení fotografií a videí. Většina obsahu na Rajčeti je veřejně dostupná, a můžete zde najít vše od deset let starého alba cizího maturitního večírku po dokumentaci kamínků z dovolené. Většina fotek a alb na Rajčeti není pořízena s uměleckým záměrem. Jsou nenucené a upřímné; slouží k soukromým účelům, uchování vzpomínek, prezentaci něčího obskurního koníčku nebo ke sdílení fotek z cest a jiných zajímavých okamžiků s dalšími uživateli Rajčete. Právě v tomhle se skrývá jejich největší kvalita. Názvy jako „jen tak…“, „pokus o…“, „nuda“ a jim podobné slouží jako přímá paralela k obyčejnosti v životě, ve které se často skrývají ty nejzajímavější věci.
Výstava má za cíl, jak už název napovídá, představit divákům perly, které byly nalezeny, třikrát otočeny a vystaveny. Jejich potenciál se tak může naplnit tím, že dostanou prostor v galerii mluvit (nebo mlčet) samy za sebe nebo v kontextu s jinými perlami.”
"Co ztrácíme, když se vzdáme možnosti vytvořit něco nového? A co získáváme, když se rozhodneme přijmout to, co již dříve vytvořili druzí, a my si to jen zdánlivě bez námahy přisvojíme? Zjednodušeně a obrazně řečeno: pohled dovnitř se proměňuje na pohled ven. Ale nakonec je to vlastně jedno - na obou stranách existuje nekonečně možností. Jen v prvním případě otvíráme nejprve "srdce" a teprve potom "oči". A ve druhém případě je tomu naopak. Mohu za své umělecké dílo prohlásit něco, co zhotovil někdo jiný? Ano, vytvořit umělecké dílo přece vždy neznamená jej fyzicky zhotoviť. Vytvořit umělecké dílo znamená něco něčím nabit, něco nějak prosvětlit, něco neviditelného učinit viditelným. A není to nějaká modernistická teze, tak tomu bylo vždy.
Nic není krásné nebo působivé samo od sebe. Krása je lidský pojem. A tak také jen my dokážeme způsobit, že něco vnímáme jako krásné. Krása ve skutečnosti neexistuje. Když nad
něčím užasneme, není to nic jiného, než že se nám v ten okamžik podařilo - třebas jen na chvíli - uvidět skutečnost takovou, jaká ve skutečnosti je.
A umění má tu moc vyvolávat takové situace, kdy se naše vnímání a prožívání otevírá a ta "krása" vzniká v nás. Umění krásu nevytváří, zprostředkovává ji."
autor textu: Jiří Kovanda
"What do we lose when we give up the opportunity to create something new? And what do we gain when we decide to adopt what others have already created, and we just seemingly effortlessly appropriate it? Simply and figuratively speaking: the inward gaze is transformed into an outward gaze. But in the end it doesn't really matter - there are infinite possibilities on both sides. Only in the first case do we open first the "heart" and then the "eyes". And in the second case it is the other way around. Can I claim as my work of art something that someone else made? Yes, creating a work of art does not always mean physically making it. To create a work of art means to charge something with something, to illuminate something, to make something invisible visible. And this is not some modernist thesis, it has always been so.
Nothing is beautiful or impressive by itself. Beauty is a human concept. And so, too, only we can cause something to be perceived as beautiful. Beauty doesn't really exist. When you think about
we are amazed by something, it is nothing more than that we have managed to see reality as it really is, if only for a moment.
And art has the power to create situations where our perception and experience opens up and the "beauty" arises within us. Art does not create beauty, it mediates it."
Autor textu: Jiří Kovanda
"They drew images from the open source mediathek rajce.net, a digital media archive where private people post their photos and make them public. The platform was highly used in the 2000-2010 years, right in the alley of the fascination with the bespoken time period in recent years. What makes rajce.net special is that it’s a relatively small image collection with many interesting photos, used by people for their creative leisure activity output. “Hidden Gems”.
The way Zuzka and Agáta dealt with the found material was a very appreciating, graceful one. They took time to browse through the images, were struck by the creativity of the works, and decided to build their concepts around those achievements. Their process formed in a small cottage somewhere in the Czech Republic, they curated a smaller collection of images based on their aesthetic interests, which include everyday beauty and the modification of simply mundane things and events into happenings. Zuzka usually transforms materials such as cable binders, office paper and pearls into mind-evoking reference systems. Agáta uses semi-public infrastructures such as information labels from a doctor's office and evokes surprises with her well-thought-out associations and research. There, they found a commonality with the Czech artist Jiří Kovanda, whose works since the 1960s often compile little seemingly banal installations and poetic works of art. In an act of sympathy towards each other's ideas, they asked him to be the curator of the show, a role he charmingly fulfilled by acts such as adding a small vitrine in a perfectly fitting corner at the entry of the gallery, unnoticed by the visitor. He supported them through studio visits prior and an exhibition text. 
Zuzka and Agáta followed their integrity of making work that builds on a (local) art historical context, including previous generations into their art-making practice and engaging in respectful and stimulating personal exchange. This fosters the level of communication between generations, which in Prague has faced many controversies in recent years at both fine arts academies.
The concept of the exhibition went further in their quest of honor, by asking the creators of the source works from rajce.net in personally written messages for allowance to print and exhibit their uploaded works at the exhibition. Accompanied by an invite to the exhibition opening. One person out of the selected artists gave their approval, their photo being chosen to be exhibited upon the entry door similar to putting a cross at the doorstep for signaling. It also happens to be a collage of a tomato, which the Czech word rajce translates into. By asking for permission and thanking the author, they do what generative AI has failed to do by default up until now.
The small data source they used, a Czech-based platform from a specific pre-social media time-period, is a surprising data pool, again a hidden gem unlikely to be envisioned to explicitly be used by AI to fuel their responses. By so doing they question the standards of reference and data sourcing, adding a sprinkle of local “domain specific” sets of pictures into the data mix, abnorming the principles of mostly dominantly western (US) based and trained AI models.
They added a spatial dimension to the exhibited works to the equation, by building sculptures out of the depicted objects from the photos, such as an object out of a stapled wall isolation material, beautified by an ornament drawing made of construction foam. With so doing they remind us of our grounded existence, as a person being able to move and build, make changes in the infrastructure. As they include the material dimension and with the come-to-being of the depicted data, the works remind me of the lateral consequences of data usage of for example exploitative algorithm.
By using the source data in intricated ways they also show the possibility of modality to change AI infrastructure. In a shown video work Zuzka animates a found series of photos of clouds that undergoes change into a film that uses the reel-like time frame of around 7-8 seconds per clip, a prototypical example of how conventions around image consumption shifted. When I asked Zuzka about her style of cutting the video, for her it was an intuitive practice. The 2k Foto series becomes a visual film diary of small changes.
The printed photos with the self-written mails to the authors of rajce.net were placed on the window shelves in the gallery, using second-hand photo albums that were commonly used in the time of high popularity of rajce.net. This strategy of archiving the images is a beautiful and simple but effective way.
The title of the works refers to “hidden gems” in Czech “Tahle perla ti nemůže zůstat zatajena”. In Jiří Kovandas and Zuzana Vepřeková words it is a reminder that beauty lies in the ordinary, that the eye and the taste of an individual still plays a role in everyday living.
In my reading the exhibition questions and provides answers on standards around ethics of data sourcing, the communication between generations and serves as a reminder that we indeed have agency in designing structures that treat people and their data respectfully."
Autorka textu: Ann-Sophie Gehrig 
Foto: František Svatoš 
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