ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE WINNER / 15 DECEMBER 2011, 6 P. M.
THE EXHIBITION RUNS FROM 16 DECEMBER 2011 TO 9 APRIL 2012
THE FAIR TRADE PALACE - THE SMALL HALL, 5TH FLOOR - RECESS
DUKELSKÝCH HRDINŮ 47, PRAGUE 7

www.333ng.cz
FACEBOOK/CENA 333NG
WWW. NGPRAGUE. CZ

OPENING HOURS: TUESDAY TO SUNDAY, FROM 10 A. M. TO 6 P. M.

Entrance fee to the exhibition is part of the entrance fee to the permanent exhibition in the Fair Trade Palace:
Basic - 250 CZK
Reduced - 120 CZK
Families - 350 CZK

THE EXHIBITION IS ORGANIZED BY:
THE NATIONAL GALLERY IN PRAGUE - COLLECTION OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART

CURATED BY: KAROLÍNA DOLANSKÁ

General partner of the project: the ČEZ Group, a. s.

Patron of the project: Securitas ČR, s. r. o.

Main partner of the National Gallery in Prague: UniCredit Bank Czech Republic, a. s.

Patron of the National Gallery in Prague: SYNOT TIP

Partners: Česká centra, Czech Tourism, České dráhy a. s.

Media partners:

A2 magazine
Radio 1
Prager Zeitung
Classic FM
My Companion
Prague Event Calendar
ČRo 3 - Vltava

In December 2010, the National Gallery in Prague announced the 5th year of the NG 333 Art Award of the National Gallery in Prague and the ČEZ Group, designed for artists to 33 years of age from the Czech and Slovak Republics. The prize is awarded for a work executed in an arbitrary genre and medium and originating from the recent three years.

The jury of experts selected 11 finalists from the total 150 artists who entered the competition. The result will be an exhibition of the selected works, entitled "Finalists" and organized in the Fair Trade Palace in Prague. The opening of the exhibition, held on 15 November 2011 in 6 p. m., will include announcing the final winner of the competition who will receive the prize of 333.000 CZK. The winning work as well as the exclusive rights to it will remain the property of the National Gallery in Prague. The exhibition is accompanied by a printed catalogue.

EXPERT JURY FOR THE 5TH YEAR

Jiří Černický / the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague
Karolina Dolanská / the National Gallery in Prague
Silvia Van Espen / independent art critic
Martin Káňa / artist, graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague
Martin Mainer / the Brno University of Technology - Faculty of Fine Arts
Rea Michalová / the National Gallery in Prague
Jaroslav Róna / the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague
Paulína Skavová / sculptor, curator of the UFFO social centre in Trutnov
Marta Smolíková / ProCulture
Otto Urban / the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, the New York University
Radek Wohlmuth / curator and publicist

FINALISTS NG 333 ART AWARD
of the National Gallery in Prague and the ČEZ Group
2011

Adéla Babanová
I've Been Thirty for Sixty Years, 2010

The House of Eva Weber: 2010 /black-and-white video, 5:25 min
Eva Weber: 1912 - ?/black-and-white animation, 6:23 min
The House of Eva Weber: 1930 - 2140/black-and white 3D animation, 3:15 min

The artist's style of approaching a story often interrupts viewers' ordinary understanding of time as a linear flow of events. Her videos depart from the aesthetics of television productions and employ classic film and TV procedures which Babanová, however, deliberately breaks by incorporating both formal and content "mistakes" and supernatural phenomena. She reflects the contemporary world of art against its complex internal relations, explores the mechanisms of fame and power as well as the eternal craving for immortality. The video "I've Been Thirty for Sixty Years" is a visual puzzle about Eva Weber who refuses to grow old while people and things around her yield to the rules of time. The story, moving on the verge of reality and fiction, has three parts capturing the present, past and future moments in her life.

CV
*1980, Prague

2000-2006 Academy of Fine Arts in Prague
Studios of New Media II, Graphics II and the Studio of Conceptual Work

Solo exhibitions - Selection:
2009 I've Selected Myself as the Artist of the Year, 35 M2 Gallery, Prague
2010 I've Been Thirty for Sixty Years, Kostka Gallery, Meetfactory, Prague
2011 Female Troublemakers, Jiří Švestka Gallery, Prague
Group exhibitions - Selection:
2005 Essl Award, exhibition of the competition finalists, Modern Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts, Prague
2009 Bad Filming, U dobrého pastýře Gallery, Brno

adela.babanova@gmail.com

Jan Boháč
Stasis, 2011
object, polyurethane, metal, 175 x 65 x 75 cm, weight 50 kg

The object, working with the phenomenon of physical handicap as a personal experience, invites an immediate contact with the work. It provides the opportunity to experience the position of a handicapped body, and thus at the same time becomes a social act - a new point of communication between "the healthy and the handicapped". The work combines the aesthetics of the object and the reference to an element of physical deformation, and as a whole, it results in a tangible purpose aiming at compassion and fellowship.

CV
*1978, Brandýs nad Labem

2008-2011 Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague
Studio of Sculpture, with Krištof Kintera, Dominik Lang and Edith Jeřábková

Group exhibitions - Selection:
2009 Sculptura Natura, Botanical Garden, Troja, Prague
St Hubertus Is a Woman, relocated squat Milada, Prague
2010 Take Your Sculpture to the Water on Sunday, Vltava rafting-yard and its surroundings, Prague
2011 Exterier Multiplayer 2, surroundings of the Albertov and Karlov neighbourhoods, Prague
Utopia on the Abyss, Trade Fair Palace, Prague

honzabohac@email.cz

Epos 257
Urban Interventions
collection of works, 2009-1010

The artist, active under hidden identity, was detained several times in the past by the police for the suspicion of or committing a punishable offence according to §257. The number in his artistic cognomen thus forms its telling part. He focuses his work on making visible the stereotypes generally shared by the reality of people living in cities. His interventions to the urban public space pull the viewers (passers-by) in a play when they encounter his "installations" as backdrops, purposely set to nonsensical contexts and unexpected places. The records of these actions and the responses to them provoke thinking about the contemporary character of freedom.

CV
*1982, Prague

between 1996 and 2006 was several times detained by the police on the street for the suspicion of or committing a punishable offence according to §257 b)
1996 detained by the police for the first time according to §257 of Law No. 140/1961 Coll. of Criminal Law; investigated as the underage (five hours' detention at a police station)

Group exhibitions - Selection:
2005 European Street, Du Moment Gallery, Brussels
2007 Street Art Prague, Školská 28 Space of Communication, Prague
Keep It Thoro, road underpass, surroundings of the metro station Vltavská, Prague
2008 Names, the first street art and graffiti festival in the Czech Republic, Prague
2010 Metropolis, EXPO 2010, Shanghai, China

Jakub Geltner
Black, Polished, Hard, 2011
installation, object, granite, 12 x 58 x 11 mm, weight 220 g
video screening, series of videos

The work of natural stone, executed after the artist's own technical calculation, is an object in which the meaning of contemporary fetish correlates with the function of prehistoric occult objects. Although it lacks any function, it reminds of another, generally known object. The reduced character and at the same time the recognisability of the original "model" provokes thoughts about the values of the contemporary consumerist society and the dependence of people on its products.
The work combines the Geltner's technical education and artistic refinement, while both aspects result in the object's specific character of both preciseness and beauty.

CV
*1981, Karlovy Vary

2007-2011 Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Studio of New Media I, with Markus Huemer
2010-2011 fellowship at Korean National University of Arts, Seoul
2001-2004 Czech Technical University in Prague, Faculty of Architecture

Solo exhibitions - Selection:
2011 Nest 02, public space installation, Liběchov
Nest 01, public space installation, Prague
Group exhibitions - Selection:
2010 Illusion, Corridor - KNUA Gallery, Seoul
Across Today, National Gallery in Prague, Prague
We Are Waiting for the Perfect Wave, Künstlerhaus Bregenz
2011 Thinking like a Forest, city park, Maribor

www.geltner

Jakub Janovský
Alle gegen alle, 2011
cycle of paintings, mixed media

The artist presents a selection of three paintings originating from a more extensive cycle. He does not only employ classical painting techniques but also a silicon gun in his work, while the latter allows him for deliberate giving up full control over the creative process, which results in works oscillating between purpose and randomness.
The partial lack of control over a drawing enhances the typical expressive nature of Janovský's oeuvre and refers to the freedom with which he approaches the testing his own learned methods.

CV
*1984, Jihlava
2004-2010 Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Studio of Drawing, with Jitka Svobodová

Solo exhibitions - Selection:
2008 Alcohole Eye, Jewish cemetery, Telč
2009 Kango Mortale, House at the Golden Ring, Prague City Gallery, Prague
2011 Familia, Petr Novotný Gallery, Prague
Group exhibitions - Selection:
2008 Introcity "Nuclear Family", Topič Salon, Prague
2009 Finalists of the NG 333 Art Award, National Gallery in Prague, Prague
2010 Critique Award, Gallery of Critics, Prague
2010 Sous l'emprise de la passion, Chalons-en-Champagne
2011 Kick off, Dvorak Sec Contemporary, Prague

www.jakubjanovsky.com

Vojtěch Horálek
China Town, 2011
collection of paintings, oil on canvas

The main subject of the collection is the phenomenon described by the artist as "commonplace exotica". It departs from the previous cycle where Horálek's frequent inspiration was the genre of rambler song. He finds in it the poetics of snatches of exotic world observed from Czech perspective and thus perceived in a somewhat pop-culture form. The presented work at the same time reflects the Czech reality of today - the omnipresence of the Asian minority whose culture we learned not to perceive as a foreign one, albeit without really becoming deeper familiar with it, and which actually loses its contours in the everyday contact with our world. The works, executed on old sailcloth and pieces of tarpaulin, speak the language of the poor, while the plasticity and perfection with which they are prepared and used for the paintings enhance the beauty of the precise painting style, mediating a real story.

CV
*1983, Prague
2010 graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Studio of Painting, with Michal Rittstein

Solo exhibitions - Selection:
2011 Out there in the Blue Distance, Gallery 9, Prague
China Town, Klicperovo Theatre, Hradec Králové
Group exhibitions - Selection:
2008 The Stará Boleslav Pilgrimage, Documentary exhibition of S. P. Gallery, Academy of Fine Arts in Prague
Painting III. of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Aleš South Bohemian Gallery, the Wortner House, České Budějovice
2009 Jungart, Dolmen Gallery, Brno / Prague
2010 Focus Show, Dolmen Gallery, Prague
Graduates from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, National Gallery in Prague, Prague

www.vojtahoralek.eu

Denisa Krausová
Cabinet of Oddities, 2011
cycle of paintings, oil on canvas

Still-life represents a field within which the artist - fascinated by curious and bizarre objects - creates collages of deliberately incongruous elements and artefacts and incorporates them into unfamiliar, imaginary landscapes. Accidental contexts allow her for elaborating new stories with multilayered meanings. Krausová develops her main subject, i.e. the phenomenon of collecting, in the cycle "Cabinet of Oddities" as far as to the extent of setting fragments of her own paintings to the individual works in the form of collector's items.

CV
*1981, Jihlava
1999-2005 Brno University of Technology - Faculty of Fine Arts, Studio of Painting II, with Martin Mainer

Solo exhibitions - Selection:
2007 Cycle Tchèque, aCTUEL'aRT, LaGalerie, Paris
2009 Fairytales, Divus Unit 30, London
2011 A Cow Won't Catch up with a Rabbit, Chodovská tvrz Gallery, Prague
Group exhibitions - Selection:
2009 Normal Painting, Mánes Exhibition Hall, Prague
2009 Finalists of the NG 333 Award, National Gallery in Prague, Prague
2010 Artichoke Art Fair, Meet Factory, Prague
2010 and 2011 nominated to the Critique Award for Young Painting, Gallery of Critics, Prague
2011 A Tramp Who's Never Been to a Forest, South Railway Station, Plzeň

www.denisakrausova.net

Jakub Matuška aka Masker
WINNER OF THE 333 AWARD
Porn Bloopers, 2009
acrylic, spray paint, air brush on canvas, 500 x 400 cm

Matuška, a very distinct representative of the contemporary street art scene, is involved in the fields of video, photography, object, drawing and paintings and has been combining all these techniques in his hitherto oeuvre. His works are a dialectic mixture of the disciplined gallery work and the freedom of artistic expression. The surrealist accent appears in Masker's works as an elementary point of departure, no matter if they were executed, so to say, under the roof or in the open air.

CV
*1981, Prague
2003-2009 Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Studio of Painting II, with Vladimír Skrepl

Solo and group exhibitions - Selection:
2007 Kamuky na Kamuky, Bodhy gallery Brick Lane, London
2008 NUNUNU-NEW YORK, Karlín Studios, Prague
2011 Yours Truly, Gallery of Fine Arts, Cheb
Group exhibitions - Selection:
2009 Graduates from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, National Gallery in Prague, Prague
2010 Jindřich Chalupecký Award, DOX, Prague
EXPO 2010, Shanghai
In Crisis We Trust, Trafo Gallery, Prague
2011 Pre-opening, Art-Bank Museum of Young Art, Prague

www.masker1.net

Samuel Paučo
Behind the Curtain, 2011
collection of paintings, multimedia on canvas

The artist presents a collection of paintings in which he employs geological structures of landscapes and mountains as a phenomenon bespeaking of the excessiveness of nature. Looking at the horizons invokes the experience of greatness, which results in inner silence, a moment of ultimate humbleness and spiritual enlightenment. The colour palette of the paintings - as dark energetic information in the dialectic play between representation and abstraction, illusiveness and flatness, calculus and coincidence, superficiality and spirituality - enhances the mystery with which nature, in its complex structure, speaks to us humans.

CV
*1986, Zvolen

2005-2011 Brno University of Technology - Faculty of Fine Arts, Studio of Painting II, with Martin Mainer and Petr Kvíčala

Solo exhibitions - Selection:
2007 Boys Don't Cry, Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava
TwoPs, Gallery 2p, Ústí nad Labem
2008 Clouds, Dolmen Gallery, Uherské Hradiště
2011 Behind the Curtain, Wannieck Gallery, Brno
Group exhibitions - Selection:
2009 ESSL Award 2009 - Finalists, National Gallery in Prague, Prague
Punkwa, Gallery of the City of Blansko
2010 Brno ist Berlin, Berlin ist Brno, Aula Gallery - Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno
2011 ABS, The Chemistry Gallery, Prague
2011 Dissertations 2011 - Selection of Dissertations, The Chemistry Gallery, Prague

www.samuelpauco.com

Alessandra Svatek, Artur Magrot
Re:, 2011
Re: series of works made of the ephemeral material of everyday consumption, in public space
Re: abbreviation of the English terms "response" or "reply"; prefix signifying "back", "backwards", "again", "anew"
Re: reaction, recycling, respect...

The two authors have collaborated since 2010. At present, they are jointly involved in street art, installations, animation and graphics. They use public space as an open exhibition hall, selecting dilapidated, abandoned places for their realizations and transforming the repellence of these sites to a foundation of their works. Their 2011 installation, displayed in unexploited urban shop windows, attracted attention of wide public as well as their numerous artistic followers from, for example, Portugal and Austria. The activities of this artistic tandem result in their frequent collisions with the local authorities whose disagreement as well as unsatisfactory arguments testify to the necessity to continue in developing a dialogue about our freedom in the space around us and the role of art in it.

CV
*1979, Düsseldorf I 
*1985, Cheb
2002-2009 Painting, Accademia di Belle di Arti Brera, Milan
2005-2010 Photography & Media, St Agnes Secondary School of Applied Arts, Český Krumlov

Joint projects - Selection:
2010 L'aur'amara, MC Gallery, New York
Rutraxela, Stolen Gallery, Český Krumlov
Subtopos, Gartenhaus der Künste, Munich
Small Flowers, G4 Gallery, Cheb
2011 You Can't Escape, Museum of Young Art, Prague
Art in Dailiness, Egon Schiele Art Centrum, Český Krumlov

rutraxela@gmail.com

Ján Vasilko
The Power of Unity aka Warding off Evil Spirits, An Industrial Saint, The Encounter, 2008-2009
three paintings, acrylic on canvas

Ján Vasilko ranks to the young generation of Slovak artist. His oeuvre is reminiscent of a secluded island inhabited by combines, vacuum cleaners, various spare parts and components, old sculptures and logos of bankrupted clubs. Ján Vasilko and P. Králik also jointly established the Iron Party - an artistic project involved in absurd, utopian, melancholic and romantic activities. "It is based in protecting the rights and freedoms of both old and new machines, industrial buildings and field mechanisms."

CV
*1979, Humenné

2003-2005 Faculty of Arts in Košice, Studio of Contemporary Painting, with A. Szentpétery
2004 Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Studio of Painting, with Vladimír Skrepl
2003 Academy of Fine Arts and Design Bratislava, Studio of Painting, with D. Fisher

Solo exhibitions - Selection:
2007 Wandering through the Ruhr Basin, City Gallery, Miskolcz
2009 Utopia and Visions from Eastern Europe, Strabag Haus, Vienna
2010 Designs for the First Museum of Contemporary Art in Slovakia, Space Gallery, Bratislava
Group exhibitions - Selection:
2009 Praguebiennale 4, Karlín Studios, Prague
Erased Walls, Freies Museum, Berlin
2011 PicturEsque Ways - Contemporary Slovak Painting, Wannieck Gallery, Brno

janovasilko@gmail.com

TEXTS WRITTEN BY: KLÁRA PAŠKOVÁ SYNKOVÁ
PR DEPARTMENT
OF THE NATIONAL GALLERY IN PRAGUE

CONTACT FOR JOURNALISTS:
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