Nikola Brabcová & Karin Šrubařová / Recordings of the Surface

3. 5. 2024 – 13. 6. 2024, opening 2. 5. 2023 7pm

Nikola Brabcová and Karin Šrubařová work independently as visual artists and teachers, but have also been working together for many years in an artistic tandem. Both studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, one in the studio of Milan Knížák, the other in the studio of Vladimír Skrepl. Since 2014 they have created their own platform entitled Prototyp for artistic, curatorial, residential and pedagogical collaborations, in which real activism is intertwined with education and love of the creative process, as well as authentic processuality itself. Their Prototyp functions as a kind of kaleidoscope of their interests, which resounds with what is most important – namely life. As it gradually became established, took shape and evolved over time, the needs and ways of incorporating for example family activities into the regular creative practice of the artistic team have also changed. Both enjoy experimenting, either with new media or by taking an analogous route. These paths are also frequently combined in working with the processing of material from outside, in which, through a subtle but distinctively sensitive rendering, they demonstrate an empathetic handling which culminates in an absence of authorship. A strong interdisciplinary current appears in their artistic practice, as well as an approach of joint discovery of working in collectives. Together with this, they refer to the authenticity of the situation not only as a genius loci, but predominantly with regard to the artistic research that they always create for the given area. The community collectives that are established often transcend the certain rational aspect that connects to the sense of belonging relating to care.

An international project on which both artists worked as part of the two-year project Regeneration for the Artyčok internet platform concerned the erosion of soil and its condition, both in Iceland and in the Czech Republic. Together with the cameraman Ivan Svoboda, the artists took part in an international artistic-research project mapping soil erosion in Iceland, Norway and the Czech Republic. Within such a small geographical area, Iceland is home to the largest European deserts. This volcanic island, which is specific precisely because of its active volcanoes and the pressure of the thermal waters on its surface, at the same time reflects the crisis of soil in a story of lack of care for its condition. 
“The story of our relationship to the earth is written more truthfully on the earth itself than on any page. There it endures. The earth remembers what we have said and what we have done.” At an exhibition for Gallery 35M2 entitled Recordings of the Surface, both artists narrate their story of a fascination with the land in which they play out a new dimension within the framework of new technologies. They no longer create a potential video essay entirely for the gallery, but rather create an artificial space for it, as well as virtual data which is not confined by the walls of the gallery but which, through transmission, can reach absolutely everybody. The artists here celebrate the skill of the surface and the capacity of the soil with the aid of a strong aesthetic dominance, which is brought far closer to humanity within moving pictures. However, this aesthetically exuberant canon is disrupted by further layered images, which from an abstract form develop into a more concrete and legible presentation. We do not have a conception of linear time, because the first time always arrived with the first nations that respected the land around themselves. The layer of soil is a system without which survival is impossible, all of us are within it and everything comes from it. This soil defends itself here, as if it were displayed within a crystalline body – one moment it is above the surface, the next below the surface in an indefinite, hibernating time. The work thus becomes interlocked as a living individual of the land into fragile communities, at the forefront of an absent presence, thanks to which it can narrate its own and their stories which enter into the structure of the surface. In a non-linear and poetic flow, the essay offers audiences a visual and auditory perception on several levels of the senses. The cascades of contrasts and antagonisms that we find within an intimate dimension as against a planetary one, in the Icelandic or the Czech landscape, inorganic or organic matter, thus create a mosaic of a layered view of the theme in question. Despite the fact that the authors touch upon living nature, a paradox appears here of digital technologies which contrast with living matter, and transform the shape of the landscape for several generations to come. As the botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer states in his book The Democracy of Species, soil matter existed here long before we arrived, and if we fail to act like a sister or brother to it, then we, like it, shall face extinction. It gives us everything, while demanding nothing from us. At the very outset it is necessary for us to stop – here, in time, to sit down and observe, to cast our gaze around and perceive, to experience and understand that we are constituted by what is around us. “All our actions are important. Every day you are creating the future.”

exhibitors: Nikola Brabcová & Karin Šrubařová
curator: Tea Záchová

*Apart from the opening and events, which will be announced in more detail, the exhibition will be held online.

The project is realised with the financial support of the Capital City of Prague. Prague, the Prague 3 Municipal District, the Ministry of Culture and the State Culture Fund of the Czech Republic. Thank you for your support.

(1) KIMMERER, Robin Wall. The Democracy of Species. Series Green Ideas 10. London: Penguin Books, 2021. ISBN 978-0-141-99704-9, p. 76.
(2) MAGNASON, Andri Snaer. O času a vodě. Praha: Argo, 2022. ISBN 978-80-257-3790-3.