Adam Kašpar, Wall at Neurur

„When we first opened the Summer Art Salon in the KODL Gallery five years ago, our motivation was to bring Czech society closer to the youngest generation of contemporary artists. For the first few years, we focused mainly on painting. Last year, our Salon expanded to include photography and we’ve decided to dedicate this year’s Salon primarily to this medium. Photography is still a relatively underrated medium in the Czech Republic, which is a great pity, because we have many photographers whose pictures have conquered the world’s most important galleries, and many contemporary artists also use photography in the creative process. The work of all the artists we have approached for this year’s Salon is closely linked to photography. There are internationally renowned professionals in the field, such as Antonín Kratochvíl, Ivan Pinkava and Sebastião Salgado, artists who cannot do without photographs, videos or new technologies and optical devices in their work (Adam Kašpar and Jakub Nepraš), or Louise Frydman, who was attracted to the principle of photography during her studies at the American International Center of Photography in New York, and since then, her work has been mainly devoted to working with light and contrasts, which is an integral part of the photographic process. In four years, the medium of photography will celebrate two hundred years since its inception, and my great wish is that it will achieve the same appreciation as other forms of contemporary art.“