Jiri David - Preliminary Retrospective

Preliminary Retrospective / Jiri David The Prague City Gallery came to organize an extensive exhibition of one of the most well-known Czech contemporary artists, Jiri David. The show, entitled “Preliminary Retrospective” and held in the Prague Municipal Library, presents a shortcut through David’s oeuvre from the mid-1980s to the present day. It not only employs works that have survived completely but also fragments of installations which do not exist as wholes anymore. The exhibition’s title refers to the fact that we keep looking back at a vast, colorful and certainly an unfinished oeuvre, as was also claimed by the director of the Brno Moravian Gallery, Marek Pokorný. In his view, the title also moreover points out that David’s interpretation of his own work does not claim self-certainty, instead challenging a discussion over the approach of theoreticians, gallery owners and viewers as the artists on the subject of artists at the pinnacle of their career.