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Performances and Installations1976-2005

Jirí Kovanda - Performances and Installations
A rediscovery in Conceptual art.
This book is the first complete edition of the actions, installations and interventions (1976-2005) of Jirí Kovanda. The design of the book replicates the A4 pages, with photographs and typewritten texts attached, which the artist used in the 1970s and 1980s as his exhibition documentation.
Kovanda's ephemeral activities in the 1970s and 1980s focused on the discovery of new types of relationships, which the artist adopted with his friends as well as with anonymous passers-by in the streets. Kovanda's interventions and installations from the 1980s constitute ironic reactions to American Minimalism. The artist ‘installed' them in peripheral locations of the public space during the period of so-called "real socialism." The book treats Kovanda's performance-intervention work up to 2005.
Along with the complete documentation, there is an attempt to situate, in a discursive manner, Kovanda's work in the history of conceptualism. The book includes three interviews: Hans Ulrich Obrist's interview with Jirí Kovanda; the Czech theorist and art historian Jirí Sevcík's interview with the editor-in-chief of the magazine "Springerin" Georg Schöllhamer; and Vít Havránek's epistolary interviews with Pawel Polit and Igor Zabel.
First volume of the series "Tranzit," edited by Vít Havránek, focusing on Central and Eastern Europe artists.
Jiří Kovanda (born 1953 in Prague) is one of the outstanding conceptual artists of the Czech art scene. His first performances took place in public space in Prague in the mid-1970s. His minimal actions, all based on a detailed scenario, were all recorded through photography and instruction leaflets. After 1978, he staged minimalist and poetical interventions and, in the 1980s, he turned to painting before abandoning art practice. His work was recently rediscovered and Kovanda has been active again creating installations, paintings and performances.
Edited by Vít Havránek.
Texts by Vít Havránek, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Pawel Polit, Georg Schöllhamer, Jirí Sevcik, Igor Zabel.
 
published in 2006
English edition
21 x 29,7 cm (hardcover, cloth binding)
146 pages (5 color & 46 b/w ill.)
 
ISBN : 978-3-905701-74-6
EAN : 9783905701746
 
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Performances and Installations Performances and Installations Performances and Installations


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