Václav Magid
Born in Leningrad (USSR) in 1979, lives and works in Prague (Czech Republic).

On screening: From the Aesthetic Education Secret File
Video, 12:05 minutes - 2013

The project tells the tale of the search for a privileged space for art in a manner of a spy movie. It draws on two sources of material: firstly, the thoughts of the late 18th Century German thinkers, who saw beauty and the arts as a means of achieving freedom and true humanity, and secondly, a Soviet television series called 17 Moments of Spring (1973), which tells the story of a Soviet secret agent who has infiltrated into the Nazi German elite in the final months of World War II.
We see the Soviet agent cracking a coded message using a clue that he found in a volume of Schiller’s collected writings. The message describes a real historical scene from the life of Friedrich Hölderlin, reported in one of his letters from 1794, when he and Goethe met in Schiller’s house and failed to recognize each other. All the three poets believed that human society could be cultivated through the aesthetics. The failure of recognition described in the video could be read as a metaphor for the transfer of the ideals of modernist aesthetics to the political reality of modern age.


RECENT SOLO SHOWS
2014 Epimenedes’ Lectures, Photograph Gallery, Prague
2013 Solidaire/solitaire, Gallery of Young Artists, Brno
2012 From the Aesthetic Education Secret Files, Kostka Gallery, Prague
2012 28 Days and a Few Evenings, Entrance Gallery, Prague
2012 Coordinates, Moravian Gallery, Brno
2009 Father’s Blind Eye, Jelení Gallery, Prague
2006 April Fools’ Day, A.M.180 Gallery, Prague

RECENT (SELECTED) GROUP SHOWS
2014 9th International Biennial of Photography and Visual Arts: Pixels of Paradise, Liège
2014 Dorothea von Stetten Kunstpreis 2014: Young Art, Kunstmuseum Bonn, Bonn
2013 12th Biennale de Lyon: Meanwhile… Suddenly, and Then, Lyon
2013 Jindřich Chalupecký Award: 2013 Final, National Gallery, Prague
2013 Memories of the Future II, House of the Lords from Kunštát, Brno
2012 Islands of Resistence: Between the First and Second Modernity 1985–2012, National Gallery, Prague
2011 Distrust of Intelligentsia, OPEN Gallery, Bratislava
2010 Jindřich Chalupecký Award: 2010 Final, Center of Contemporary Art DOX, Prague
2010 And Don’t Forget the Flowers, Moravian Gallery, Brno
2007 Invisible Things, Trafó Gallery, Budapest
2006 I Invited Some Friends to Have a Look, Nova Gallery, Zagreb
2006 Shadows of Humor, Center of Contemporary Art M’ars, Moscow

RESIDENCIES
2012 MuseumsQuartier, Vienna
2011 A-I-R Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw
2011 Duende Studios, Rotterdam
2009 International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York
2009 SPACE Residency Lab, Bratislava

WEB
www.artlist.cz/?id=5523&lang=1