United Visual Artists - UVA (GB) → Strange Attractions

19–24
  • Hradčany
  • Projection

About project

The exhibition Strange Attractions, realized in cooperation with Signal Festival and Kunsthalle Praha, presents the current work of the legendary British studio UVA – United Visual Artists.

The exhibition project highlights the parallels between the unpredictability of chaos theory and the structured patterns that emerge from it. By examining the nuanced boundary between order and chaos, the exhibition reflects on how these principles manifest across nature, artistic processes, and societal structures, encouraging viewers to contemplate the complex dynamics shaping our environment.The works presented invite viewers to consider how initial conditions and underlying dynamics shape the increasing urgency of phenomena in our environment, offering a deeper understanding of the intricate beauty of chaotic systems. 

The exhibition’s centrepiece is a kinetic horizontal double pendulum, enhanced by projectors illuminating the gallery walls. The pendulum’s movements are translated in real-time into data, driving dynamic projections that connect physical and digital realities. This synthesis of order and chaos seamlessly blends the tangible with the intangible, the visible with the invisible, offering an experience that unfolds through time and motion. Both pendulum rotations are converted in real time into data that is used to control the dynamic projections. The synthesis of order and chaos thus occurs in an instant, combining the tangible with the intangible, the seen with the unseen, and offering an experience that can only be understood through the unfolding of movement and time.

The exhibition presents three further works from UVA: Present Shock, Etymologies, and Serendipity, which develop the dynamic themes of order and chaos at the levels of language, social and economic phenomena, and space-time theories.

Artist

United Visual Artists (UVA) is a London-based studio founded in 2003 by British artist Matt Clark. UVA's diverse body of work integrates new technologies with traditional media such as sculpture, performance and site-specific installations. Drawing on sources ranging from ancient philosophy to theoretical science, they explore the cultural frameworks and natural phenomena that shape our knowledge, creating tools that manipulate our perceptions and reveal the relativity of our experience. Rather than material objects, UVA’s works are better understood as events in time in which the performance of light, sound, and movement unfolds. 

UVA have been represented in major gallery institutions including the Barbican Curve Gallery, London; the Royal Academy of Arts; the Serpentine Gallery, London; The Wellcome Trust; the Victoria & Albert Museum; YCAM, Tokyo, Japan and the Sydney Biennale. UVA’s studio collaborates with a variety of professionals beyond the visual arts. Collaborations span many disciplines and personalities including choreographers Animals of Distinction, Benjamin Millepied and the Paris Opéra Ballet, filmmaker Adam Curtis, musicians Massive Attack, Battles, James Blake, Ben Frost.

Location

Kunsthalle Praha is a place for exhibitions, educational programmes and cultural events. It was founded as a non-state and non-profit platform by The Pudil Family Foundation. Kunsthalle won the National Award for Architecture and offers three galleries, a design shop and a café with a terrace overlooking the Petřín Hill and Prague Castle. The mission of Kunsthalle Praha is to connect the Czech and international art scene, to present new perspectives on 20th and 21st century art and to engage the widest possible audience in a dynamic cultural programme. The installation by United Visual Artists is located in Gallery 3, which allows the work of the art collective to be perceived in the pure context of the minimalist architecture of granular concrete and technology.

Supported by

  • Partner of the installation

    Kunsthalle Prague