Main hero of Radek Brousil’s film in a half-dead fish costume wanders through a city and a country in a mental dialog speaking to a female hyperobject about the end, shame, guilt and possibility to do something. Skateboarding, smoking cigarettes and questions about “feeling the butterflies” together with long, distancing shots and captivating music as if would refer to melancholic romance of independent 90s cult movies. The authenticity of intimate experience is however constantly alienated by the overal theatricality of costumes and props, overplay, cut-ins and mainly ever present shadows of real catastrophe. Intentionally unresolved ambivalence of intimate and real-life drama can be hence read as resolutive appeal. Textile objects and staged film photographs further problematise the malleability of seemingly contradictory linking of activism and escapism. Critical reading of Czech culture and history mingles with personal sentiment for the landscapes of our childhood.
Radek Brousil is a Czech artist who makes installations, working predominantly with textiles, alongside ceramics, film, photography and video. His themes address social testimony, presenting an activist expression on an uncertain future. Brousil defines social, cultural and environmental problems using unexpected interpretations and terminology, and chooses rather to look at these issues on a symbolic, personal and emotional level. His interest focuses on post-colonial tendencies in contemporary artistic discourse, for example, his investigation into the issue of the origin and distribution of flowers or textiles. Through his work with textiles, Brousil emphasises their Czech origin and African destiny, enabling him to highlight the problems of market economy and its power structures. Radek Brousil graduated from the Studio of Photography at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where he is currently continuing his doctoral studies. In 2015 he received the Oscar Čepan Award for Young Visual Artists. His work is included in local and international private and institutional collections.
