Marek Meduna
Uterus, Staff, Vomit (Inharitance Proceedings E338)
Artist
Marek Meduna
(1973, Praha), Czech
Original Title
Uterus, Staff, Vomit (Inharitance Proceedings E338)
Date2017
Mediumoil and enamel on canvas
Dimensions170 × 125 cm
Classificationspaintings
Credit LineLong-term loan from the SVIT Gallery, Prague
DescriptionMarek Meduna is a notable figure on the Central European artistic scene. He is interested in questions regarding the art industry and uses a wide array of techniques, media, means of expression, and topics. He is always unorthodox in choosing the form and the method of processing and does not merely reproduce his previous works. Meduna does not conceive his exhibitions as a whole composed of individual artefacts, but as a complex of ideas. He provides the audience merely with coded rebuses and riddles for which he provides clues in the form of exhibition names, captions, original texts or texts written into the images. Their messages are often ambiguous, full of mild irony, hyperbole and humor based in a semiotic play of signification. The craft side of his work invites the viewer towards an intuitive reading, almost independent of the clues provided.
The image is part of a series with slimy, perhaps mutated bodily fragments which oscillate between anatomical/natural illustration and the nude/portrait, but also the boundary between detail and whole. By means of its revolting, kitschy visual style, the image teases the aesthetic conventions of art. Its morphology can be read as being inspired by Surrealism, whose return to contemporary art is currently being discussed and in practice often translates to an overt aestheticisation of the art work.
Marek Meduna (*1973, Prague) studied between 1999–2005 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he underwent diverse schooling in the studios of Jiří David, Veronika Bromová, Michael Rittstein and Vladimír Skrepl. He approaches his art in a subversive, critical manner, much like he approaches his painting, where he puts emphasis on the constant redefinition of its intentions and on connecting the work of the painter with conceptual insight. Meduna has been active on the Czech art scene from the 2000s and is considered to be an important artist of his generation. His work has been featured as part of the exhibitions of the contemporary art scene (Po Sametu, Prague City Gallery, Prague 2009; Ostrovy odporu: mezi první a druhou moderností 1985–2012, National Gallery in Prague 2012; Orient V, Prague City Gallery Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace, Prague 2019). Marek Meduna was one of the founding members of the art group Rafani, where he was active 2002–2006. He was assistant professor to Jiří Černický at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. He currently leads the Painting IV studio at the Academy of Fine Arts.
The image is part of a series with slimy, perhaps mutated bodily fragments which oscillate between anatomical/natural illustration and the nude/portrait, but also the boundary between detail and whole. By means of its revolting, kitschy visual style, the image teases the aesthetic conventions of art. Its morphology can be read as being inspired by Surrealism, whose return to contemporary art is currently being discussed and in practice often translates to an overt aestheticisation of the art work.
Marek Meduna (*1973, Prague) studied between 1999–2005 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he underwent diverse schooling in the studios of Jiří David, Veronika Bromová, Michael Rittstein and Vladimír Skrepl. He approaches his art in a subversive, critical manner, much like he approaches his painting, where he puts emphasis on the constant redefinition of its intentions and on connecting the work of the painter with conceptual insight. Meduna has been active on the Czech art scene from the 2000s and is considered to be an important artist of his generation. His work has been featured as part of the exhibitions of the contemporary art scene (Po Sametu, Prague City Gallery, Prague 2009; Ostrovy odporu: mezi první a druhou moderností 1985–2012, National Gallery in Prague 2012; Orient V, Prague City Gallery Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace, Prague 2019). Marek Meduna was one of the founding members of the art group Rafani, where he was active 2002–2006. He was assistant professor to Jiří Černický at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. He currently leads the Painting IV studio at the Academy of Fine Arts.
