Summer Art Salon 2024

For the seventh time, the summer art salon KodlContemporary will present a number of leading personalities of the contemporary art scene. The exhibition, which you can visit from June 19 to August 16, 2024 at the Kodl Gallery at Národní 7, is a heterogeneous polylogue of diverse, but unique and innovative approaches to contemporary art.

According to KodlContemporary curator Eva Vele, the work of the selected creators can be divided into two fluidly intermingling categories: socially and politically critical authors who, in addition to wider social problems, also engage in their own psychosocial introspection, and artists who build on well-known works of art history and revise their meaning or artistic style at present. The first group includes paintings by Michal Mráz and Jakub Matuška aka Masker, conceptual objects and vases by Anna Jožová and photographs by Bára Prášilová. Pavlína Kvita’s totemic sculptures and Martin Janecký’s glass busts would stand on the border between the two groups, and Monika Žáková’s works can be perceived entirely in the spirit of the second category.

The variety of media represented, from glass sculpture to photography, painting, sculpture to conceptual design, reflects the effort to overcome collecting conventions related to the preference of the traditional medium of painting over other creative means. Pushing boundaries and limits in the perception and presentation of contemporary Czech art is, after all, the main mission of KodlContemporary and thus of the annual Salons. In addition to artistic and technological ones, this year’s will also bridge demographic boundaries, not only by including young authors, but also by the audience it targets. After the exhibition at the KODL Gallery, it will move to ISP and Park Lane high schools, where students will be presented with a rich accompanying program focused on contemporary art in addition to the exhibition.

“This year will be the seventh Summer Art Salon, which has been presenting a selection of leading representatives of the contemporary art scene to collectors since 2017. This year we want to draw attention to demographic boundaries. Collecting is often perceived as a leisure activity reserved only to certain members of society. By including a few emerging artists, who, nevertheless, are already recognised on the contemporary scene, we decided to overcome this belief and prove that collecting does not have to be a matter of staggering sums. After the end of the exhibition in the gallery, we will move it to two secondary schools – ISP and Park Lane, where, in addition to the opening, we will hold several workshops for students focused on art history, collecting, developing creativity, and investing in art.” Jakub Kodl, Co-founder and CEO of KodlContemporary

Present artists: Monika Žáková, Martin Janecký, Anna Jožová, Jakub Matuška aka Masker, Michal Mráz, Pavlína Kvita, Bára Prášilová