Author: Alena Kupčíková /www.dys.cz/
Curators: Alena Kupčíková a Martina Veverková /5s_gallery/

Exhibiting Artists: Štěpán Beránek, Ivan Komárek, Markéta Korečková, Alena Kupčíková, Luděk Míšek, Christl Mudrak, Kateřina Novotná, Jan Pospíšil, Kryštof Rybák

The unique concept of thie exhibition joins separate societal aspects - educational, social, and artistic. Until now, artists have neither publicly acknowledged their dyslexia nor have they presented it as such.  The joining of these societal aspects confirms the unbreakable wholeness of the individual in his relation to the rest of world. And the element which joins these aspects is, paradoxically, a handicap or a disability. Amongst these disabilities is dysgraphia, problems with graphically forming words when writing; dysortographia, problems with spelling; dyscalculia, problems with understanding numbers and mathematics; dyspraxia, problems with motor coordination and movement, and ADHD, problems with hyperactivity. Dyslexia, a handicap that causes problems in reading and reading comprehension is one of the most widespread of this family of handicaps, and that is why we have chosen to use it in the name of this exhibition, short-hand for all the other related disabilities we've outlined.

The relationship between dislexia and artistic talent can be relatively simply explained as the activation of the brain's right hemisphere simultaneously with problems in the functioning of the left hemisphere which prevent them from functioning in tandem, as they should when reading and writing. Those with dyslexia can however be creative in the visual domain, where their unique spatial imagination can be an advantage. In the same regard, many dyslectics are pilots, and are able to orient themselves especially well in the neverending open sky. Discussions with artists have shown an interesting fact: by necessity and from the inabilities that dyslexia brings, and in order to understand relational situations and societal interaction, they create their own visual systems. With ease and facility they manipulate symbols in their thoughts; a three dimensional objectivization of their imagination through which they interpret the world around them. Their language, naturally and instead of words, becomes the picture, the face, the image. Dyslexia can be found in many creative fields: photography, painting, architecture. The concept of this exhibition specifically addresses the relationship between a disability and creativity. In this regard, dyslexia clearly becomes a GIFT.