Digital reality and ubiquitous technologies put our attention under constant visual pressure. They compel us to react, to have emotional responses. They seek to gain as much of our attention as possible. This year’s Fotograf Festival, aptly titled HYPERTENSION23, contemplates this phenomenon in three separate exhibitions. The display will start off with a group exhibition under the same name.
Inspired by the medical term hypertension, which denotes high blood pressure, the exhibition at the Trade Fair Palace features ten artists whose work ranges between objects, performance, film, and photography. It deals not only with the pressure on our senses, but also with the search for human identity, whose original form has been abstracted by digital space. The Prague exhibition will present a number of prominent international and Czech artists.
The Trade Fair Palace will also host the presentation of a special installation The Extreme Self: Age of You by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist in collaboration with the graphic designer Wan Daly. The visual essay is intended to coexist with the surrounding space of the city and will be displayed at the Trade Fair Palace and in the Můstek metro entrance hall.
Exhibiting at #hypertension23: aLifveForms, Stephanie Comilang, Cécile B. Evans, Ian Cheng, Sin Wai Kin, Martins Kohout, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Lawrence Lek, Stef Van Looveren, Markus Selg
Curator: Monika Čejková
About Festival
The Fotograf Festival explores intersections in photography and contemporary art – just like its partner projects – Fotograf Gallery and Fotograf Magazine. Festival is held in Autumn months and it presents current topic through solo as well as group exhibitions prepared in cooperation with invited domestic or foreign curators in various Prague galleries and institutions. A series of discussions, site-specific events, public space exhibitions, projections and guided/commented tours accompany that exhibition program. Fotograf Festival is the only thematic- and curator-conceived photography festival in the Czech Republic. Its aim is to promote the photographic medium and its broader integration into contemporary art and into the conscience of the general public. The discussions, at which invited experts debate each other on the current festival theme in the context of visual art, are meant not only for the expert public, but for the lay public as well. Fotograf Festival looks to build a tradition and a new platform for a photography festival that places Prague among other important centers for photography and the visual arts in Europe. It strives to share contemporary photographic art and the creation of a thematically-focused space where the general public and experts from around the world can meet.
