David Možný
Night Shift

David Možný is a contemporary Czech visual artist whose work includes digitally generated images, video, animation, objects and, most recently, also site-specific installations that often reflect the relationship between people, systems and the city. His current piece develops from the context of spatial and technologically oriented art that operates at the threshold between digital simulation, architectural intervention and posthuman aesthetics. The upcoming solo exhibition NIGHT SHIFT consists of a complex spatial installation that organically grows through the entire exhibition space of the House of Arts, relativising and disturbing the very core of its architecture. This modified environment can be disorienting at times, and it also features further works and partial installations which explore similar themes. In disrupting and ungrounding our fundamental certainties – such as our perception of space, its ordering and physical distance – Možný’s work offers a pithy commentary on contemporary social topics and phenomena.

His installations can be read as materialised models of infrastructure – not as mere records, but rather as abstract condensations of systemic logic. But they can equally be understood in the context of so-called “expanded sculpture”, in which a sculpture becomes a situation, environment or structure that modifies our understanding of space. What is important, is that Možný’s works are not only formally three-dimensional, but that they grow out of digital modelling, simulation and data logic, and only then are realised as three-dimensional structures using specific materials which usually reference the gradual displacement of the manufacturing industry by digital technologies – in other words, they address the transformation of society. We can understand his installations as “archaeologies of the future” – as system models that are simultaneously the relics of modernist faith as well as a symptom of its decay. The human figure completely disappears or is reduced to an aspect of the wider mechanism; the human scale is not a permanent reference point for space as such, but rather its temporary passenger. Možný’s works can thus be understood in the context of posthumanist tendencies that have been represented in the art world by artists such as Pierre Huyghe, Mike Nelson or Jesse Darling. Instead of explicit political gestures or straight-forward critique, Možný prefers to use the fascination with systems and their entrancing aesthetics, their rhythms and autonomy. The local context is essential for him, making his works understandable and consistent for analysis. His work thus always remains anchored in a particular urban experience of Central Europe – the experience of industrialisation, its later phases and subsequent transformations following 1989.

David Možný was born in 1963 in Brno. Given the limited opportunities at the time as well as his family’s traditional occupation, he graduated from the Faculty of Education and is therefore largely self-taught in the field of visual arts. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions and shows, both in Czechia and abroad, but although he has received numerous awards for his work, he remains a unique, stand-alone artist. A turning point in his work came at the start of the new millennium with the mass proliferation of digital technologies, particularly personal computers and the then-readily available software for editing digital photos and videos. At the start of this era, he was active on the Brno club scene as a VJ and created projections for theater performances and staged readings. His early works were significantly influenced by the aesthetics of music videos and video games, as well as by video art, which was experiencing a somewhat belated boom on the local scene at the time.

The exhibition is held under the auspices of Mrs. Markéta Vaňková, the mayor of the statutory city of Brno.

Czech television is the main media partner for this project.

Main photo: Walls from the closed Nopova retirement home, which will be part of the exhibition installation.