Jiří Surůvka: Gotham City

Jiří Surůvka: Gotham City
10. 7.–7. 8. 2020
MMC KIBLA / KiBela, Ulica kneza Koclja 9, Maribor

You are invited to join us at the opening of the exhibition Gotham City by the famous Czech artist Jiří Surůvka, on Friday, July 10, 2020, at 7 pm, in the KiBela / MMC KIBLA art space in Maribor.

INVITATION (PDF)
ABOUT EXHIBITON (PDF)

Jiří Surůvka is one of the most important and comprehensive European artists. He represented the Czech Republic at the Venice Biennale - the 49th International Art Exhibition in 2001; he was a guest in Maribor in 2000 (hEXPO project) and 2001 (as part of the Styrian Autumn Festival). As our old acquaintance, he walked around the shopping malls of Maribor like Batman; he mixed many media in his works - painting, statue, graphics, installation, photography, video, film, performance, theater, literature, music -, incorporating history into the present, virtuality mixed with reality, metaphysics overflows with the physical and vice versa. This year he will present himsef with a unique overview exhibition for the first time in Slovenia, which with its unusual spatial and associative flashes and the humorous background, will undoubtedly be a visual treat and one of the highlights of summer; his introductory performance is the icing on the cake.

Jiří Surůvka, born 1961, is since 2004 head of the Video-Multimedia-Performance Studio at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ostrava, where he works at the Department of Intermedia Studies and Department of Graphics and Drawing. He has had numerous international exhibitions and was awarded with two art awards. He represented the Czech Republic at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. He received multiple stipends and attended numerous residencies: annual scholarship in Bad Ems, Germany; two-month stay at Ateliers Höherweg in Düsseldorf; Kulturkontakt scholarship in Vienna; Soros scholarship in San Francisco; Spaces International scholarship in Cleveland; scholarship in Gothenburg; Soros Center scholarship in Prague in Čimelice 1999. He participated in many performance festivals in Europe, Asia and USA. He is a painter, author of objects and sculptures, installations and a performer. He is a founder of a performance group Vorkapelle Lozinski (with P. Lysacek), leader and writer of performance cabaret Fun masters comeback, a member of the group František Lozinsky o.p.s. and co-founder of the Přirození (Natural) group. In the 1990s he and his colleagues ran the theater cabaret Return of the Masters of Entertainment. He is the chairman of z.s. Galerie Michal, curator, creator of the author's cabaret, occasional reviewer of exhibitions and publicist, initiator and co-organizer of the international and now cult performance festival Malamut in Ostrava since1994.

"The content of my work is mostly ironical and self ironical, with black humor, with moral messages and a social engagement. I was born in Ostrava in 1961. After graduating from high-school, I worked in various professions, did my military service and didn't finish various schools. Then I graduated from the Philosophical Faculty of the Ostrava University, majoring in Czech and arts. For two years, I was teaching at the Secondary Applied Arts School and now I work part time at the Arts Institute of the Ostrava University. I am a liberal artist and a disabled pensioner part time." (Jiří Surůvka)

The exhibition is open until August 7, 2020
No admission, feel free to join us.

The event will be held in accordance with the recommendations of the NIJZ/NIPH.

MMC KIBLA / KiBela
Open Monday through Friday, 10 am to 6 pm.