The exhibition Romantic Construct follows the installation, performance and, to a certain extent, the subversive trends in contemporary photography that evoke references to the Romantic tradition. The curatorial approach focuses on artistic and social strategies applied to a Romantic perception of nature of the home. The presented artists remix Romantic forms in a wide variety of ways; they utilise artistic strategies as the master copy for perceiving a personal space – the home idyll, or they transfer these strategies to perceive a remote space – a landscape that we don’t inhabit, but are entering and that we surely know from the accumulation of visual images. In many cases they also playfully probe the essence of sculpture and performance; they create their aesthetic forms for the camera’s viewfinder. In addition, forms of re-cataloguing, remixing of the visual tradition and classification systems appear in their work. We observe this in three mutually pervading themes leading from the home idyll and their Romantic rituals, to a Romantic reminiscence in experiencing nature, to performances for the camera that reconstruct nature and apply artistic and social strategies to it.

Jan Adriaans, Netherlands

Melanie Bonajo, Netherlands

Amira Fritz, Germany

Sanna Kannisto, Finlandia

Matthieu Lavanchy, Switzerland

Kamila Musilová, Czech Republic

Bára Přidalová, Czech Republic

Yan Renelt – Kryštof Kalina, Czech Republic

Jaap Scheeren, Netherlands

Diana Scherer, Netherlands

Michaela Thelenová, Czech Republic

Martin Tůma, Czech Republic

Tomáš Werner, Slovakia

Henk Wildschut, Netherlands

Magda Wunsche, Poland