The gallery Zahorian & Van Espen (Bratislava) is presenting works by Jakub Choma in the New Positions sector at Art Cologne 2024. In this video, Jakub Choma leads us on a tour of his booth. Jacub Choma (born 1995, Slovakia) graduated in 2023 from the painting studio of Jiří Černický and Michal Novotný at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. Already during his studies, he was awarded the Jindřich Chalupecký Award for 2020, the most prestigious Czech art prize for emerging artists. Mixing diverse media such as painting, assemblage, sculpture, sound, and video, he creates complex installations addressing our bodily existence within the present digital infrastructure. Choma exhibits prolifically both at home and abroad.
Since 1980, New Positions has given young artists the unique opportunity to showcase their works in special 25-square-metre spaces, directly next to their representing gallery stands. This is the chance to connect with the next generation of artists and get acquainted with their creative process.
Jakub Choma / Zahorian & Van Espen at Art Cologne 2024. Cologne (Germany), November 8, 2024.
Since 1980, New Positions has given young artists the unique opportunity to showcase their works in special 25-square-metre spaces, directly next to their representing gallery stands. This is the chance to connect with the next generation of artists and get acquainted with their creative process.
Jakub Choma / Zahorian & Van Espen at Art Cologne 2024. Cologne (Germany), November 8, 2024.
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CreativityTranscript
00:00In, up, in, up, in, up, in, up, just a little bit, like so.
00:22So, welcome to my booth.
00:36I like to think about this environment as something that challenges people, challenges
00:41weavers to sort of try to adapt to things that they are not necessarily, you know, confronting
00:49in like every day, on every day routine.
00:53And what is interesting for me that towards my practice is important that there is a impact
00:58on like brutal materiality, but after digital experience, and also obviously it's something
01:04that is really present in my generation, I'm 95.
01:09So it's kind of something that I'm trying to translate all these like socio-political
01:13ideas into something brutally sort of physical, but obviously as I said, after this experience
01:22that we have when we are non-stop online.
01:28So when you come here and you just try to walk towards this platform, it's something
01:34that we can see here, this shaft here, that breathes, and what it is about is that there
01:44is this breathing mechanism that sort of, you know, the thing is that this five cent
01:51bag is trying to be, sort of trying to propose the idea of lungs, and there is this, this
01:58overvoice that speaks or certainly illustrates and invites the weaver to take this breathing
02:07session with it.
02:09So this is obviously like this topic sort of idea, and also the whole thing could be,
02:16you know, hashtag this topic, but here obviously I'm trying to kind of invite the weaver to
02:21sort of calm down, you know, these overwhelming situations that we are like challenged on
02:26daily basis, but as we can see by in aesthetic sort of, and how I deal with this aesthetic,
02:32it's sort of like this little fractal, this little assemblage, this kind of like, really
02:36like this distorted world that we are kind of trying to puzzle in, and we are sort of
02:42trying to, right, like survive within it somehow, right?
02:45So it's this whole thing where you're walking toward, like walking through this floor piece
02:53where you already are kind of like actuated physically, right?
02:59And you're becoming like this little detective, sort of like zooming in, zooming out, as we
03:04always do when we're zooming in or zooming out on our smartphones on a daily basis, and
03:09this piece that is like in the opposite of the breathing shaft is like a free piece of
03:14like toots, like, like, it's also like one of the pieces that is the most autobiographical
03:23because I just, this sort of switch to accept my physicality or our physicality, I kind
03:32of started to think afterwards I had this, this surgery, and also afterwards I was starting
03:39to think about saliva and things that are kind of coming outside of us, but are like
03:44integrally in us, and also the flow of the toxins that are kind of like going down as
03:50a saliva, it also can be weaved not only as a toxin or as a toxic culture, but also
03:57as a, as a flow, as a water, also as a flow as data, and so on and so on.
04:03This piece here that's in the corner is also like to me kind of performative one, it's
04:09like quite physical, this is like cork bark, cork bark that I was using as a part of the
04:14performance and I was kind of like putting it on my, on my legs, so it became like a
04:19semi-armor, and so there is another thing of like, you know, armor as a skin or armor
04:27as a cork bark, but also really inhabit, you know, sort of a, but translate it through
04:32some kind of like, it has this like visual toxicity in itself and also it's kind of proposing
04:39this idea of a machine man.
04:43This piece here, it's one of the pieces that are like in between being a sculpture or being
04:48in the handpiece as a painting, we can say, it's like a hybrid between cyborg and painting,
04:55and here the material that I often use, cork, we can see it gets its natural presence, but
05:01also it has this graininess, and I like that in concentration with the ideas about the
05:07pixels and, you know, flatness also towards the painting, graphic design, and so on.
05:17We can stop here for a bit, sorry, I just wanted to show this, here in this tank, I
05:23just wanted to show that, there's like a little reservoir or a tank where I place these, I
05:31call them fossils, or like of tomorrow, they might look like fizzed wedges or fossils of,
05:37you know, something that might happen tomorrow, or they are here for someone that might look
05:42at them when we are not here, for example, and this one is sort of in its final version,
05:49let's say, in an enclosure, right, so it's almost like trapped in time.
05:55So in the back here, when you're from here, there's like two semi-figural pieces, and
06:03they're proposing, they're like chips or semi-figural pieces as I think of them, and they're proposing
06:08these mantras that capitalistic world are sort of like pushing us into, you know, like,
06:15you know, control, habit, attitude, mindset, the things that we should sort of, you know,
06:21that we should follow, or there's this constant push, and that's something also that is in
06:25my work, that there is this constant push, or constant like massage, you know, of information
06:32and its virtual materiality and visuality.
06:38So these mantras I view, or these parts, these cork parts that are here, I view as fizzed
06:44wedges, you know, or as tokens, and these tags are sort of the mantras, as I said, and
06:50this piece here is more like a, you know, some kind of, how to say, this is like a place
07:00where you would change your costume in front of, you know, or like, it could be used for
07:06some, you know, what I was thinking about is like, this is the place where you would
07:10change your skin, right, or you would change your, you would reassemble your body, or your
07:15presence also, both in digital and in physical world, right, so there are these like leftovers
07:23of skins, the confrontation with the mirror, of course, or there's also in the pieces before,
07:31there's always a mirror present that it always sort of like puts you into reality that you
07:38are here, you are the physical one that is sort of like inhabiting this microcosm that
07:43I built, so that's also important for me, so this is this kind of like a weird, you
07:50know, like, yeah, like a place where you would sort of change your clothes or change your
07:54skin and, yeah, and like it has, you know, it has many like, or you can have many ends
08:06that we would think of this sort of portal of some sort of, almost like.
08:13And the very end, we have this very last two pieces where, this is the wall piece where
08:21the shape or the, I mean, the base shape is, I call them whispers, this is one of the,
08:26one from the series is whisper, where the profile of a head sort of through hand whispers
08:31something into the ear, and also here, as we can see, like, it certainly illustrates
08:37like the rotting tooth, but then also there is a little thing that is still growing there,
08:42so there is a one, there is some kind of a hope still, and then also we can see like
08:47the, almost like frozen in, but this is obviously the resinous material, we can see the resin
08:53in sand and the gears, there is all this sort of connotations to sending the gears and sort
08:59of how to, how could we sort of, how can we, how can we slow this relentless seemingly
09:07not, you know, not, you know, wheel of capitalism that's sort of the, yeah, is there any hope
09:20for that to do? And also there is, the very last piece here is kind of an excavation point
09:29I would say, there is this shovel that has a chip on itself, it's like you would print,
09:34and it sort of talks about how data and minerals, I mean, the minerals that we have together,
09:43how it is connected, right, and how we are often forgetting that there are microchips
09:48and micro things, like systems that are in a phone, and that we have all this everyday
09:54holding in our hands, but we are forgetting that the materials that has been produced
09:58from, it's materials that someone had to excavate, and that would be, I guess that would be.