Notes on the exhibition

As curators of this year’s AVU graduates exhibition, we initially thought about how we could contribute to the whole thing. We soon sensed we should not spice it up with imaginative or flashy curatorial gestures. Similarly, we did not try to theoretically extract a generational statement or a report on the latest trends from the diploma theses and the conversations about them. We soon reformulated our program and, instead, focused on what we could do without. A series of consultations with the graduates made us conclude that we would not resign either a catalog or prolonged opening hours.

If anything seemed dispensable, it was the tension usually associated with working on a graduation work and its presentation. After all, these are not artworks like any other. They simultaneously function as evidence in the defense process, which confirms the artistic competence of the authors in question and concludes their official initiation. Our primary aim, therefore, was to alleviate, or, better, funnel this potential anxiety so that the graduates could focus on their projects with the prospect of an exhibition framework they could identify with. At the same time, we have decided to acknowledge and even underline that most of the exhibition and catalog preparation takes place before the completion of the diplomas. We, thus, wanted to focus a little more than at other times on the progress of the work rather than its outcome, on a kind of provisionality and incompleteness – as opposed to the usual strategy of disguising them. We thought of the catalog with such a key in mind, too. The graphic designers embraced the same approach: they grasped our aim better than we could explain (and we thank them for that).

The texts on the individual diploma projects were survey answers to four questions, the wording of which we sought laboriously. They were to be general enough for everyone to relate to and stimulating enough to be worth answering or even returning to. The first two questions are about what the students pursue. The first is about the graduation work, and the second is about everything else. Answers to the second question can thus tell about other artistic and leisure activities or work in the usual sense. The next pair of questions explores what the graduates think and how they feel. The third question, therefore, addresses their working conditions or idea of what they should be, whether on the studio scale, the school, or society. Finally, we asked about the student’s attitude to the graduation work defense as an institutionally acknowledged graduation procedure.

In question 4, inviting suggestions for other possible options for such a closing, we did not want to diminish the significance of this final exam. However, our guideline was the belief that it is more of an exam via art than an art exam (or art talent show, if we should refer to the recent Czech film of the same name). We relied on the proposition that we are not dealing with the verification of some great, eternal, and indifferent Art with a capital A: that we are not talking about a single entity but many sub-instances. The graduate exhibition presents a range of artistic approaches for juxtaposition with multiple experiences and expectations. We are pleased they are exhibited to the public, regardless of how wide.

In sequence with asking about the graduates’ relationship to AVU as an institution, the catalog includes a complete list of its current employees. We found the model for such a move in the 1949 school exhibition catalog stating the names of all employees, from the rector and professors to sub-clerks, attendants, and cleaners. This time, our primary concern is not to confirm or question the AVU hierarchy and show respect to its entire staff. We do not want to claim anything about the belonging of individual graduates to the school as a whole. However, we can assume that many of those mentioned influenced their studies more or less directly. If the school exposes its face in the graduate display, the complete list of its staff should reveal its articulated body. This body carries the heavy head that now bends down to bid the hitherto wards farewell.