TOMÁŠ MORAVANSKÝ

REPOSITORY / UNDERLINING THE OBVIOUS

Gallery project, site-specific, performance

Exhibition - 15.12. 2020 - 30.1. 2021
Komnata Gallery, Zlín

Artist: Tomáš Moravanský

Opening performance: Tereza Sikorová

The Komnata Gallery is situated within the kiosk of a former local bus stop along the main motorway interchange of Zlín, in the area of a dispersed industrial zone. The building sometimes serves as a refuge for groups of illegal substance users or the presence of homeless people from a nearby tent community that come to collect metal wires or firewood, both of which clad the considerably large area of the bus stop.

Within the limited possibilities of a small gallery and the available budget provided by the city of Zlín, a partial upgrade of the exhibition space was carried out as a part of the installation. The renovation involved the purchase of new doors, replacement lighting, ripping out the old wooden floors, repainting the walls and cleaning work. At the same time, the security grille was removed so that the new door could be highlighted. The removed floorboards were used in creating a multi-layered collage, evoking the idea of urban graffiti, in a nearby lightbox display. The Repository exhibition monitors the period of its own duration with a view to explore the interactions of external influences and the space itself. The newly installed back door, which is the only entrance to the space, remained unlocked, for the entire duration of the exhibition. This information has been kept secret from the public and thus leaving the exhibition open to ‚random‘ acts of curiosity. The remaining budget was used for additional repairs needed as result of external damage and also for putting in the new concrete floor, allowing the gallery to continue to host any future exhibition projects while in operation.

At the opening of the exhibition, there was a initiating performance titled “Underlining the Obvious”, where an actress dressed in a casual corporate hipster-style costume, sipping coffee from an orange coloured single use coffee cup in one hand and paying undivided attention to online content on her phone‘s display – was stood half way in an open sewer not paying attention to what was happening around her.