In the long run Adam Vačkář creates an economic and ecological scenario based on the reality of the consumer system. From Margin of Hope (2013), based on a concrete ecological crisis in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, it gradually transforms into the imaginary socio-critical scenario of the future.

Adam Vačkář: Biotechnology Garageband Phase
Curated by Mariana Serranová
November 9 – December 20, 2018
Stone Projects, Prague

Chemistry, just like economics, (these days almost indistinguishable) will lead the anthropology of the material culture of this era.
Benjamin H. Bratton

In the long run Adam Vačkář creates an economic and ecological scenario based on the reality of the consumer system. From Margin of Hope (2013), based on a concrete ecological crisis in the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, it gradually transforms into the imaginary socio-critical scenario of the future.

His latest projects link pop cultural utopian series such as Star Trek (This Side of Paradise, 2016, Botany Bay, 2018) with an abstraction made up of concrete objects of a particular contemporary reality together with an imaginary vision of the future. The project created
for Stone Projects uses common materials such as metal, glass, wood, and natural materials, whose properties and surfaces are altered to make their origin and destination unclear at first glance. It leaves the viewer in doubt and forces him to penetrate the other layers for an interpretation. Through photographs and installation, it evokes an indefinite mechanical reproducible repeatability, which turns upside-down: laser-carved precision metals embellish its uniqueness, and the plants, through their surface treatment and colour, are seemingly mechanically reproducible.

The contemporary world both outside and within us is changing at the molecular level, although it seems to remain the same. Doses of poisons in the form of micro particles of plastic, blended with the economic thought and belief in an endless economic growth penetrates the walls of our cells and changes the human condition on a biological level. Today we encounter other materials that are potentially equally transformative. From biotechnology to the Internet of Things to Artificial Intelligence and Robotics to Network Production and the Replication of Additives, this variety of materials allows for the re-composition of the world on previously unthinkable scales, the transformation of living tissue into a plastic medium and the intertwining of inorganic machines and landscapes with new kinds of practical intelligence. Benjamin H. Bratton. On Speculative Design, DIS magazine

Adam Vačkář, born in Prague in 1979, graduated in Paris at ENSBA, where he graduated from the Palais de Tokyo Residential Program. He exhibited in the Center Pompidou, the Aargauer Kunsthaus, the Koelnischer Kunstverein, the National Gallery in Prague, and Art Statements and Art Film at Art Basel.

 

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the Stone Projects and Ondřej Polák