AVU Graduates & Guests

Graduates

Articles

When the diploma exhibition was “expelled” from the National Gallery’s Trade Fair Palace three years ago, the Academy sought its new format, which would give it an attractive dimension even in the limited spaces of its studios. Since 2018, the exhibition thus has been a curated project, every year based on a different concept and accompanied by an array of events that make it a small festival of its kind. In 2020, the exhibition received an additional layer. The new diplomas are displayed side by side samples of works by several “guests” – successful artists who graduated from the school in the past fifty years and have lectured or lecture there. The vast majority of the latter are even utterly unknown for those in the picture.

The sense of this “intervention” into the event is to make it more appealing and draw the attention of the public to it as well as the young artists, thus helping them enter the contemporary art scene. It is true that many of them have already established a firm position and include already famous names of contemporary young art. We, first of all, tried to present the invited “guests” in a way that does not overshadow the graduates, who naturally play the primary role. We hope we have managed to find some enticing affinities and links even despite the distance of many years between the works.

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Curators Marcel Fišer, Petr Dub
Technical Implementation Jana Jenšovská, Adam Trbušek, AVU workshops
Translations Lucie Vidmarová
Text editing Lucie Vidmarová
Graphic design Kolář & Kutálek
Photos Radek Dětinský and author’s archive
Website Jakub Mynář
Special thanks Anežka Bartlová, Hana Janečková, Simona Janů, Lynda Zein, Jakub Mynář, Tomáš Pospiszyl, Eliška Míkovcová, Kateřina Sochací, Dagmar Svatošová
Exhibition partners Ministerstvo školství, mládeže a tělovýchovy, Magistrát hlavního města Prahy, Klub AVU, Radio 1, Artalk, Artmap