SMILE 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 AWKWARD
We cordially invite you to the opening of an exhibition by Magda Stanová
Medium Gallery
- Curator: Eliška Mazalanová
- Opening: Tuesday, 1 September 2026, 18:00
- Duration: 2 September – 27 September 2026
Annotation
WARNING (or perhaps more of a request): Please read this description, as well as any other texts related to the exhibition SMILE 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 AWKWARD, only after visiting the exhibition. Thank you in advance for your understanding!
Not starting with a concept, a textual annotation, a project description, or a linguistic prompt… In her latest works, Magda Stanová explores the impact of text and the bureaucratic context on artistic practice. More specifically, she examines the impact of the necessity to verbalize and comment on her work, as well as the excess of textual production that precedes the creative process itself – whether it involves writing grant proposals, various project applications, and open calls for funding, or for the purposes of academic art education. As she puts it, she is taking a fitness ride through visual thinking and a detox from text, which is increasingly crowding out nonlinear thinking in the art world. And so, in the individual works that make up this exhibition, linguistic discourse and artistic language, thinking in words and thinking in images and materials, are interwoven. Some of her drawings, photographs, and objects can be, on the one hand, almost precisely descriptive; in others, however, she returns to text and writing in a visual, spontaneous manner. So, are you here? Since you have read this far, it is clear that you did not heed our request and read the synopsis before visiting the exhibition... Because who would read something like that only afterward, right?! Just so you know, you’ve done yourself a disservice! Why? Because the exhibition might actually be about something else, and the expectations created by this synopsis will prevent you from seeing that.
Magda Stanová
Magda Stanová studied photography at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (VŠVU), fine arts at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst in Zurich, new genres at the San Francisco Art Institute (thanks to a Fulbright scholarship), and earned her Ph.D. in fine arts at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where she currently teaches in the doctoral program. She presents performative lectures at academic conferences and draws out the theory of photography at photography festivals. She combines insights from the cognitive sciences on the perception of art with her experiences from the creative process. She is the author of two books: In the Shadow of Photography (2022) and Algorithms in Art (2015), and co-author of The Pedestrian’s Venice (2017). She has exhibited, for example, at the Angus Hughes Gallery in London, EFA Project Space in New York, ThreeWalls in Chicago, the Fremantle Arts Centre in Fremantle (Australia), at ZPAF and S-ka in Kraków, at Školská 28 in Prague, and at Shedhalle in Zurich.
More information on Magda Stanová’s website
www.magdastanova.sk