Pavla Sceranková: Art as Work That Gives Meaning

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Where:

• Room 277

  • Drotárska cesta 44, AFAD

When:

• 10 April 2025 at 10:00 AM

 

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Speaker:

• Pavla Sceranková

 

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Annotation

I have long been interested in the role that art can play in a world that is daily confronted with the reality of ongoing crises. I ask myself what capacity I have, as an artist, to engage with what is happening. I want to understand art as work that is meaningful. But I also want to talk openly about work that, under external pressure, disintegrates into a system of meaningless tasks — detached from the whole, broken down into mindless mechanical movements and interchangeable actions. Work that has nowhere to escape, that never ceases and never rests.

In the lecture, I would like to outline the paths through which I relate to these questions. I will present several examples of other artists whose approaches resonate with my own search for answers.

Bio + Artist Statement

Pavla Sceranková brings a new authorial language and expression into the field of sculpture and object art, introducing a new concept that connects with the strong legacy of postmodern but also neo-conceptual spatial art. She creates sculptural objects and installations characterized by minimalist clarity and a sensitive relationship to the given place. Another aspect of her work is the creation of objects with elements of action, inviting viewers to interact. Sometimes they take the form of video, or rather video-sculptures, which stand at the crossroads of performance, animated sculpture, and autonomous video. They express the existential relationship of a person to the environment in which they live and which they confront. In terms of content, Pavla Sceranková intensely reflects on human perception, memory, and individual experience of the surrounding world. She draws from personal experience and examines how this experience is preserved in memory and what form it takes. The artist thematizes the phenomenon of perception, the experience of the act of perceiving, the relationship of perception to the perceived world, and the awareness of the act of perception. (Lucie Drdová)

Pavla Sceranková (*1980)

Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 2000 to 2006, where she completed her doctoral studies in 2011. During her scholarships, she completed a one-year internship with Prof. Tony Cragg in Berlin. Between 2010 and 2015, she worked as an academic at the Department of Art Education and Textile Design at the University of Hradec Králové. She currently leads her own Intermedia Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague together with Dušan Zahoranský.

Sceranková has presented her work in numerous solo exhibitions, for example at Fait Gallery in Brno (with Dušan Zahoranský, 2019), at Pump House Gallery in London (with Lucie Sceranková, 2016), at the Moravian Gallery in Brno (2014), and at the City Gallery Prague (2013 and 2011). She was invited to participate in the international group exhibition *Model* at Rudolfinum Gallery in Prague (2015) and took part in the group exhibition *Europe Europe* at the Astrup Fearnley Museum in Oslo (2014) curated by Gunnar Kvaran and Hans Ulrich Obrist. In 2015, she became a finalist for the Jindřich Chalupecký Award for the second time (first in 2007).

She received the Václav Chad Award at the Zlín Youth Salon (2009) and the Cyprián Award at the Trnava Biennial (2007). Her works are included in the collections of the National Gallery in Prague, the Slovak National Gallery in Bratislava, the Prague City Gallery, and several European private collections.

She is currently presenting a solo exhibition *Moles Digging Their Hands into Lights* at the 8smička Gallery in Humpolec. She is also part of the exhibition project of the Jindřich Chalupecký Society *No Time for Work, No Time without Work* in the Laichter House in Prague, and the group exhibition *L’identité* at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague.

 

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^{Title photo – author: Kateřina Zemanová}