Kunsthalle Praha was established by the reconstruction of the transformer station. It will open on Tuesdays
Together with the exhibition Kineticism: 100 Years of Electricity in Art, the operation of the gallery will launch an exhibition on the history of the transformer station building. On Tuesday and Wednesday, the Kunsthalle Prague will open to the first visitors free of charge, but registration for entry is already full.
“We wanted to create a friendly and creative place that inspires art, which is there for you who love art, but also for those who are still looking for a way to art,” Ivana Goosen, executive director of The Pudil Family Foundation, told reporters today. which built the space. She explained why the organizers chose the name Kunshalle.
“This term is now a common term for a type of institution anywhere in the world. Unlike the museums that came in to take care of the collections, the Kunsthalle was created for short-term exhibitions, “she said. Today, according to her, these models are interconnected, but the concept of alternating exhibitions was the inspiration for Kunsthalle Prague to be given this name. “It is also a reference to our focus, our goal, to connect the Czech and foreign scene,” she added.
The exhibition Kinetics: 100 Years of Electricity in Art captures the development of art from the first artistic use of motorized motion and artificial light to information technology and digital art today. Its four key areas are cinema, kinetic art, cyber art and computer art. There are about a hundred works on display, including loans from major institutions such as the British Tate Gallery or the French Center Pompidou.
The exhibition will present the works of pioneers such as Mary Ellen Bute, László Moholy-Nagy, Marcel Duchamp and Zdeněk Pešánek.
Since its construction in the interwar period, the building of the former Zenger transformer station has been directly and closely connected with Pešánek. In the years 1932 to 1936, he designed a set of allegorical luminokinetic sculptures called One Hundred Years of Electricity for its façade. The exhibition follows directly on his legacy and thus reveals the link between moving machines and moving images: electricity.
The preparation of the Kunsthalle took seven years, but before it opened, it experienced a protest by several artists. The Kunsthalle was built by The Pudil Family Foundation, which was founded by Petr Pudil, a former co-owner of Czech Coal, and his wife. They put their art collection into the endowment capital and the Kunsthalle Prague endowment fund was established. Three years ago, during a public presentation of the Pudil Foundation, about thirty artists organized a protest, in which they stated that Pudil, according to them, cleans his money through art, they described such a procedure as artwashing.
In 2005, Pudil participated in the acquisition of Mostecká uhelná společnost from the Appian Group, which they incorporated into the newly formed Czech Coal Group. In 2010, he sold his stake to Pavel Tykač. According to publicly available sources, Pudil did not participate in the privatization of the Most Coal Company and was not tried in any of the privatization proceedings.