| My Name | ||
| Alexandra Navratil |
| Address | Born | |
| E2 0LT London UK |
9.12.1978 | |
| My Website / Links to Friends | ||
| alenavratil@hotmail.com |
http://www.likeyou.com/alexandranavratil
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| Education | ||
| 2006-2007 | Masters Fine Arts (MFA) Goldsmiths College London UK | |
| 1999-2002 | BA Fine Arts Central St. Martins College of Art and Design, London UK | |
| 1998-1999 | Vorkurs, Hochschule für Gestaltung Zürich | |
| Solo Exhibitions | ||
| 2008 | "The Eternal Return of Difference", angels barcelona gallery, Spain | |
| Loop 08, Museo Frederic Mares, Barcelona | ||
| 2007 | "The Extra", Step in-Step out Nr.5, Fondazione Adriano Olivetti, Rome | |
| "Your Face Consumes My Dreams", in the context of Loop Artfair, Mies van der Rohe Pavillion, Barcelona, Spain | ||
| Group Exhibitions | ||
| 2008 | "Coulisse", Alexandra Navratil/ Oskar Dawicki, Piano Nobile, Genève | |
| Swiss Art Awards, Basel | ||
| ARCO Artfair Madrid | ||
| Screening of "The Extra",curated by Sabrina Van der Ley for ART FORUM Berlin |
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| 2007-2008 | "Vision:A" Travelling Video Show in collaboration with the Instituto Cervantes in the context of: Beijing: Art Beijing Milan: InVideo Lyon: Video Bienale Casablanca: International Film Festival |
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| 2007 | "SUDCI OU SUDLÀ ", Galerie ESCA, Nîmes, France | |
| "Juglejuice", EM Gallery, Seoul, South Korea | ||
| "Black Powder, White Party", Kyunghee Uni Museum, Seoul, South Korea | ||
| "Premier and Favourites", Loop Festival, Galeria dels Angels, Barcelona | ||
| "Alma Mater", Alma Enterprises Gallery, London UK | ||
| City of Zürich Art Awards Exhibition, Helmhaus Zürich | ||
| Goldsmiths College Master of Arts Degreeshow, London, UK | ||
| „Multiple Intimacy“, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Istanbul, Turkey | ||
| „Showroom 6“ with Amberg & Marti (Zürich), Riga, Latvia | ||
| ARCO Artfair, Project Caja Madrid, Madrid | ||
| EXISTENCIAS, MUSAC, Museum of Contemporary Art León, Spain | ||
| Canton of Zürich Art Awards Exhibition, Zürich | ||
| 2006 | "Trial Balloons/Globos Sonda" MUSAC, Museum of contemporary Art, Leon, Spain | |
| 2005 | FIAV, Mediterean Video Festival, St Monica Arts Centre / Metronom, Barcelona, Spain | |
| "Video Mix", La Casa Encendida,Madrid, Spain | ||
| 2004 | "New productions", Caixaforum, Barcelona, Spain | |
| "City Views", Canal de Isabel II, madrid, Spain | ||
| "En lugar del Cuerpo", Caixa Galicia, La Coruña, Spain | ||
| 2003 | "En sus 13" ADN Galerie, Barcelona, Spain | |
| Projects | ||
| 2005 | "Open Processes", Research Project and exhibition, Terrassa, Spain | |
| Residencies | ||
| 2010 | coming up: Residency at the ISCP, New York | |
| 2006 | Invitation from the Cultural Department of Austria for a Residency in Vienna | |
| 2003-2005 | Artist in Residence HANGAR, Centre for Art- Production, Barcelona, Spain | |
| Grants & Prizes | ||
| 2009 | Swiss Art Award 2009 | |
| Prix Mobilière Young Art 2009 | ||
| 2008 | Grant from the Ikea-Foundation Switzerland for the Residency at the ISCP, New York in 2010 | |
| 2007 | Patronagefond Kunsthalle Basel: Studygrant/ Studienbeitrag | |
| 2006 | Kantonaler Werkbeitrag Kunst/ Art-grant from the Canton of Zürich | |
| 2005 | 1. Videopreis IAD, Malaga | |
| 1. Preis FIAV, Mediteranes Video Festival | ||
| UBS Kultur Werkbeitrag / UBS Cultural Fonds Art-grant | ||
| "Generation 2006", Spanish Art Prize Caja Madrid | ||
| 2004 | MUSAC (Contemporary Museum Castilla y Léón) Art Award | |
| Books & publications | ||
| 2007 | Publication of work in EXIT Magzine Nr.26 "Through the Window" | |
| "Volumen II", Publication of the collection of MUSAC since 2005 | ||
| Bibliography | ||
| 2008 | Frieze Magazine: Alexandra Navratil Angels Barcelona, Spain 02/07/08 by Max Andrews |
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| News | ||
| Sept-Oct: Residency at IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art) Dublin, Ireland December: Individual Exhibition "The Searchlights That Dazzled the Stars" at angels barcelona gallery, Barcelona |
| Statements | ||
| Statement Alexandra Navratil --------------------- What would it mean to write a history of cinema from what never happens? What instruction manual would it require? Start with movement and weight, waiting and desire. The videos focus on the rehearsing and repeating of gestures. A weight of potential is amassed through movement, through and across figures. Movement in the videos is non-linear and sticky, it is side-to-side, round-and-round, it ricochets and resonates, coagulating and layering through repetitions and loops. The camera collects expectation like dust caught in a beam of light and it stockpiles desire like a broker. Framework What is present in my practice and especially in my video work is the display or use of cinematic strategies and techniques as an effort to question the very structure and production of the time-based medium and to investigate the parallels between the development of cinematic time and economical rationalization. Therefore I work with some of the techniques of structuralist / materialist filmmaking and the idea that each film is a record (not a representation, not a reproduction) of its own making, but additionally I am extending the formalistic approach by introducing elements from other genres like the melodrama or the film noir. By using and lately mis-using basic devices like the loop (The Beach), the pan or the steadycam, by revealing the stage (The Extra) or by making use of the sound from within the frame, I try to increase the theatricality and to a certain degree the absurdity of the staged scene. The theatrical operates as an access to the real. I am interested in the potentiality of the absurd as a critical tool because it is strictly based in reality but then seems to overcome reality by braking down its basic structures. The theater of the absurd as defined by Esselin and applied by Beckett and Ionescu amongst others, introduces real characters and situations while respecting all theatrical conventions. Time, location and identity are undefined and changing. Actions without consequence, dialogs and repetitive behavior are employed to create a nightmare-like situation. I employ the absurd passivity as a critical social and political tool. In my work there is often a strong element of repetition and of repetition that includes difference in order to underline the inanity of the action that takes place. This corresponds to Deleuzes’ philosophy of time where he does not deny linear time but completes it with a circular time of the return of difference. “Actual things occur in linear time but they are only viewed as complete in relation to a non-linear time. We have to account for how the actual events alter the pure virtual past and select pure differences that return eternally. The scope of an actual event goes much wider than its casual linear effects and causes. It alters the significance of the past and its power to return in the future.” Elements, gestures and places in my videos are repeated and change slightly over time. All action is non-directional and without any consequence or result and never exceeds the warm-up stage like a practice for an event that never takes place. The spaces where this non-actions happen are mostly very defined architectonical locations like the continuous wall (I’m thinking it’s a Sign), a 90 degree angle mirror (The Extra), the iconic modernist spaces and surfaces of Mies van der Rohe (Your Face Consumes my Dreams), the beach as a social and economical space of voyeuristic exchange (The Beach) and the landscapes of the city, the suburb and the mountains and their mutual representations (Fond but not in Love). My research starts with an already existing still image or text, with a single scene or sequence from a movie which I then reconstruct or restage differently and take into another sphere with another set of references. I am interested in the border between the staged and the contingent and my own control over the scene itself. For this purpose I am referring to the early days of cinematographic production. The cameras’ function, for Méliès, was in a sense, like that of Lumière - to register contingency, to transform it into a representational system while maintaining both its threat and its allure. The fascination and temptation of contingency is its promise of something other outside the systematic, it implies a rupture of the very system and order of events: It is antisystematic. What I would like to construct with my work is a kind of controlled un-control where all the elements involved and all present parties, the viewers, the camera, and the actors play on a same hierarchical level, and where the work in itself becomes completely democratic and manages to undermine the given structures of spectatorship and control. In this context I am again interested in some aspects of the early form of cinema, the cinema of Méliès, Edison, Marey and Lumière, which is often referred to as “cinema of attractions”. These early films were above all a form of direct display to the spectator, of showing and showmanship. They were openly exhibitionistic by addressing the spectator in a direct way and by making use of the gaze aimed at the camera. Giorgio Agamben writes of this moment, an awareness of being exposed to the gaze, "in that precise moment, the insubstantial nature of the human face suddenly comes to light." To look back undercuts the voyeurism of the camera, yet, he suggests, it is paradoxical, "they show that they are simulating, nevertheless they paradoxically appear more real" |
| Choice of Work | Title of Work | |
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"A Fraction of a Second Earlier", Video 3min, colour/no sound, 2009 |
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"Portrait over 30m", Video HD, 2 min, sound/colour, 2008 |
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"Stay Here and Watch Time Lapse", C-prints, 100 x 138 cm each, 2009 |
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detail of "Stay here and Watch Time Lapse" |
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"Everything You Rearranged/Everything You Left The Same (The Car)" Lambda Print 125 x 155 cm, 2008 |
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"Everything You Rearranged/Everything You Left The Same (The Branch)" Lambda Print 125 x 155 cm, 2008 |
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"Blue Spill Portraits (Blonde and Brunette)" Silkscreen on Paper, 75 x 105 cm, 2008 |
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Exhibition View "Blue Spill Portraits (Blonde and Brunette)" |
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"Now, Dissapearing (Possible Endings for a Road-movie)", Pencil on Paper, Series of 8 drawings, 29.7 x 42 cm, 2008 |
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"Now, Dissapearing (Possible Endings for a Road-movie) Exhibition View |
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"The Beach", Video HDV, 6:40 min, 2007 |
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"The Extra", video HDV, 10:20 min, 2007 |
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Still from : "Movie Goer" ( Film Besucher), Video 14:04 min, color/sound,2006 |
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"I'm thiking it's a Sign", Video HDV, 3:09 min, 2005 |
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"Your Face Consumes my Dreams" Video HDcam/Animation, 6:20 min, 2006 |
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AccumulationsII, Black/White Fotocopies on Wall, 10 x 9 x 8 m, 2006 ( Installation :MUSAC) |
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| Movies | Movietype and Size | |
| Film: extract from: "The Beach" | quicktime, size 4903 kb | |
| Film: extract from: "The Extra" | quicktime, size 4825 kb | |
| Film: extract from: "Movie-Goer" | quicktime, size 5027 kb | |
| Film: extract from: "I´m Thinking it's a Sign" | quicktime, size 3329 kb | |
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