Zeug und Cajk

„Zeug und Cajk“

Anka Helfertová / Janna Jirkova / Jan Dominik Kudla / Nicolas Prokop / Jan Rybníček

Opening

Tuesday, April 16, 2024, 7:00 p.m.

with a music performance by DJ Die-Ley and Veit B, 8:00 pm

Duration and opening hours

April 17 to May 25, 2024, Tuesday to Saturday, 1:00 - 7:00 pm

Accompanying program

Film evening on the subject of body and discomfort: April 25, 2024, 7:00 pm

Reading event with coffee from stray coffee roasters: May 11, 2024, 3:00 pm

Finissage

Saturday, May 25, 2024, 7:00 pm

with a music performance by RABOTANoLoSo

Kunstarkaden, Sparkassenstraße 3, 80331 Munich l kunstarkaden.muenchen An art space of the City of Munich

Free admission / Barrier-free / Closed on public holidays

Five artists join forces in the footsteps of Czech surrealism and Kafkaesque motifs.

In Kafka's work, unease comes with light feet, it creeps in on quiet paws and takes its place next to us.

One hundred years after the death of Franz Kafka, we ask ourselves which aspects of his work resonate particularly strongly in the present moment. Which of these can also be found in our artistic work?

Franz Kafka is an extremely important figure for the artistic tradition in both Germany and the Czech Republic and, just like us, as a German-speaking author who lived in Prague, he was strongly influenced by both cultures. In multi-ethnic Czechoslovakia between the world wars, the Surrealists immediately responded to his work with great enthusiasm.

We are tracing the specific tradition of Czechoslovak Surrealism and would like to consciously address this strand of our own artistic biographers and origins. We are fascinated by the specific heaviness, melancholy and the processing of the fear of a reality that is difficult to endure.

Kafka's treatment of corporeality reveals a certain unease, open to fragility and changeability. His treatment of the more-than-human, in the sense of the philosopher David Abram's term, is also extremely exciting: Kafka's characters are often not quite human, or not quite clearly alive. From his gloomy poetic position, Kafka declares that the image of man as an autonomous, rational being that prevailed a hundred years ago has always been a failure.

His quite humorous observations of deep interdependence, loneliness and absurdity remain relevant. The human body, which connects us to other animals and is at the same time strongly anchored in society and in different identities, is also at the forefront of our work.