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READ
Kunsthalle Praha

16 November 2023—22 April 2024

The artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset has transformed Kunsthalle Praha into a curious public library, bringing together new, never-before-seen, and existing works by sixty international artists.

For their first major exhibition in Czechia, Elmgreen & Dragset have turned Kunsthalle Praha into a public library, bringing their work into dialogue with sixty international artists. Spanning decades, geographic regions, and artistic movements, READ incorporates highlights from Kunsthalle Praha's collection and works by artists invited by the duo. The exhibition explores the enduring relevance of the written word and questions our relationship with knowledge and books in the age of digital media. Its title encourages not only reading, but also learning and understanding, as implied in the expressions “reading the signs,” “reading a situation,” or “reading the room.”

Prague’s Library Culture

Inspired by Prague's literary heritage and historic libraries, Elmgreen & Dragset’s concept for READ was reinforced by an early encounter with a key work in Kunsthalle Praha’s collection, Giorgio de Chirico's Les jouets défendus (1916). The small, enigmatic painting, a geometric study of unnamed books in an abstracted setting, led the artist duo to delve into Kunsthalle Praha’s collection and seek out works that thematically resonated with de Chirico’s metaphysical treatment of books.

READ embraces nostalgia for the pre-digital 20th century while also addressing current issues around literature and opening up discussions about its future. Here, Elmgreen & Dragset consider the library not just as a place for sharing knowledge, but one that provides basic services, filling gaps created by recent cuts to social safety nets. As people spend more time online and digital spaces gradually replace physical ones, the artists subtly question the future of public libraries.

“Prague is a city where the written word has a rich, complex history. Upon the invitation to study Kunsthalle Praha’s collection, we approached this exhibition by asking ourselves, ’What happens to libraries and the printed matter within them if digital technologies were to make them obsolete?’ In the process, we investigated how artists historically have reimagined and reworked the idea of what a book can be. In a time when books are banned in places we would not have imagined in our lifetime, we found it urgent to also incorporate both recent history and current artistic practices where books and writing play an important role,” say Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset.

The duo organized READ together with Kunsthalle Praha’s Chief Curator, Christelle Havranek, and Barbora Ropková, Collection Curator. “READ is an extensive group exhibition that has been developed over two years in close collaboration between the teams at Elmgreen & Dragset’s studio and Kunsthalle Praha. Questioning with humor and poetry the future of shared spaces for accessing knowledge, the exhibition is, above all, a vibrant tribute to the physical book—an object that, despite being endangered, continues to captivate and inspire artists,” adds Havranek.

The Kunsthalle Praha Collection as a Source

In 2021, Kunsthalle Praha acquired an important collection of art from the Fluxus Movement assembled by Marie and Milan Knížák. Many of these artworks will be exhibited for the first time in READ. Beyond Fluxus, pieces from the Kunsthalle Praha collection by artists such as Kurt Schwitters, Běla Kolářová, and Chiharu Shiota trace artistic approaches to the book as both an object and artistic medium. The earliest exhibited works document pre- and post-World War II anxieties, whereas more recent pieces reflect concerns about an era dominated by the digital sphere.

Numerous artists whose works are included in READ share a connection to Berlin, the city where Elmgreen & Dragset have lived and worked since 1997. Parallels can also be drawn between Prague and Berlin as historically significant literary centers and hubs of resistance. Both cities have evolved from their turbulent pasts to become symbols of individual freedom and fertile ground for innovative forms of expression. Furthermore, the term and institutional model of a "kunsthalle" serves as a reminder of Prague's multicultural history as a city where three nations and two languages coexisted.

Invited Artists

The invited artists in READ have all repeatedly revisited and reworked the book as a subject in their practices. In a new work, Dora García read Václav Havel’s plays Audience, Vernissage, and Petition with her fingers coated in gold dust, allowing viewers to see traces of her touch throughout the book. In a collaboration with queer theorist Paul B. Preciado, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster presents a collection of feminist and transfeminist texts that have sparked academic and civic debates. In partnership with the Prague Municipal Library, Meriç Algün presents a new iteration of her Library of Unborrowed Books, a selection of books from the library that have never been checked out. Jaro Varga’s ongoing project Library is on display in the Kunsthalle’s foyer, where the audience is invited to write their own imaginary titles on the spines of books. Saâdane Afif exhibits a work with Czech books on mountain climbing placed at a high and inaccessible point.

READ also features a selection of special book presentations. This includes a project from the Chicago Center for Caspar David Friedrich Studies, devoted exclusively to books with Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) on the cover, as well as a selection of six hundred Czech translations of French literature on loan from the French Institute in Prague.

Library Structures

In Gallery 1, visitors will encounter familiar elements from public libraries, such as rows of bookshelves, an information desk, tables with reading lamps, and a public restroom. Artworks appear throughout the space, sometimes tucked into bookshelves, and at other times mounted on the wall. Beyond the shelves, visitors will find the fifth iteration of Elmgreen & Dragset’s durational performance, Diaries, presented for the first time in four years on Wednesdays and weekends throughout the run of the exhibition. Originally shown as Paris Diaries at Galerie Perrotin in 2003, the artists presented the performance in Istanbul (2013), Hong Kong (2015), and Dallas (2019). Prague Diaries features five young men seated at a table, writing in their personal journals. Visitors are free to walk around, read over the diarists’ shoulders, and flip through the notebooks while the performers are on a break.

Upstairs in Gallery 2, Elmgreen & Dragset have rendered certain parts of the library inaccessible, with bookshelves hanging upside down from the ceiling and crumbling, unclimbable stairs leading to a door marked "Filozofie" (Philosophy). On the same floor, paper works are shown in large glass vitrines under the gaze of The Guardian, a new sculpture by Elmgreen & Dragset. A nearby installation features recently banned books, pointing to the enduring importance of libraries as repositories of knowledge and linking present-day political turmoil with that experienced under totalitarian regimes of the past.

Claire Aichholzer

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