Jana Bernartová (CZ) → I see liquid crystals everywhere

19-24
  • City center
  • LED projection

About project

Where was the rainbow on the display before the drop hit it? “I like liquid crystals,” says the artist. “I clean my screen every day. Every time it starts to rain, I pull out my phone. I enjoy it so much that I can see them through the drops.”

Through her long-term work on a series of art projects associated with the term “liquid crystals,” Jana Bernartová has explored the phenomenon of the mutability of digital colour. Digital colour is virtual and is therefore displayed differently on different devices. In the same way, our own perception of colour is different and individual, relative but also culturally conditioned. Although the universal digital colour is always defined by an immutable code, it nevertheless takes different forms. Deviations from the perfect digital pattern are therefore not only a technological problem, but also a call for openness to perceive the diversity and individual relationship of each of us to the world we see. Jana speaks of colours as light reflected or absorbed by real objects. She also sees colour emanating from digital devices. She is a member of her generation and therefore sees what she has been trained to see – red as Coca-Cola or Ferrari, or ultramarine or Parisian blue as a dead 0 0 255 RGB screen. 

Within the sound component of the work, the artist shifts the sounds of electromagnetic fields of individual devices (led panel, camera, computer and mouse), inaudible to humans, into the audible tetraplex of the installation.

Sound of the installation was made in cooperation with Michal Kindernay.

Artist

Jana Bernartová graduated from the Visual Communication Digital Media studio at the Faculty of Art and Architecture of the Technical University of Liberec under Stanislav Zippe. She then studied at the Intermedia studio of Václav Stratil at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology. She received her doctorate at the UMPRUM in Prague under the supervision of Federico Díaz and currently works at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. She actively exhibits in domestic and international galleries. In her work, she deals with the question of how technology influences and conditions our perception, and at the same time, how the perceptions we classify as given reality can actually be "virtual".

Location

The park between the Smetana Embankment and Divadelní Street was created in connection with the reconstruction of the embankment in the mid-19th century. Its dominant feature is the monument to Emperor Franz I or the Kranner Fountain in the neo-Gothic style. It was designed by the architect Josef
Kranner, who participated at the completion of the St Vitus Cathedral, and the sculptor Josef Max.. In addition to the statue of the Emperor, the fountain is decorated with statues of allegories of the Czech regions and Prague. Thanks to the artist's specific work with digital intensity and colour variability, the park, including the fountain, acquires a new contemporary form reflecting the diversity of everyone's individual perception of digital colour.

Supported by

  • Supported by

    Prague 1