Curatorial statement by Hana Buddeus
for the Cursor Gallery
Dialogues on Art Reproductions
Digital technologies have transformed our approach to art. We scroll through exhibition photographs and swipe through videos. Images are omnipresent and readily accessible. We are living in a time foretold by Paul Valéry in a 1928 text: “Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand.” If there is a parallel between the approach to reproductions that began to take shape at the turn of the 1920s and ’30s and today’s reflections on the flood of images we face, we wish to use it to consider the medium of reproduction from the perspectives of contemporary art, graphic design, photography studies, and art history.
New technologies always enable us to reconsider older technologies. Images generated by artificial intelligence are currently transforming our perspective on digital photography, while digitisation altered our perception of images printed on paper some time ago. These items sometimes increase in value as they age, yet the materials also deteriorate, become fragile, and fall apart. We inhale the scent of old magazines, hold our breath as we gaze at the velvety black of gravure, and raise a magnifying glass to examine the density of the halftone screen. Our interest lies in understanding these phenomena as principles, rather than fetishising the age value of the printed reproductions themselves. Both digital and analogue reproductions are shaped by the technological, cultural, and political conditions of their time, as well as by human agency. We thus return once again to questions such as: what constitutes a work of art, what defines an original versus a copy, which power structures make the works available to us, through which filters do we view them, and how do all these factors influence our interpretation within the history of art.
We tend to understand the world in terms of polarities, considering “originals” to be works that stand as statements in their own right, and “documents” to be images that refer to other images (or ideas). Yet, even as we create these polarities to help us make sense of the world, we suspect that reality is more colourful. From the history of photography, we know that photographic images are embodied in various material forms depending on their use. The same photograph can be both an artwork and visual documentation; it can become an original in a museum collection while simultaneously being circulated in numerous copies around the world. In practice, the boundaries between original and copy, past and present, and mechanical and digital reproductions are all constantly renegotiated.
This year-long exhibition programme is founded on dialogues between Hana Buddeus, Zbyněk Baladrán, Meghan Forbes, and Adéla Svobodová. The time we shared and the mutual trust we developed helped us establish a delicate balance and an experimental foundation that transcends the roles one might expect. Although each of us could be labelled a graphic designer, art historian, artist, exhibition architect, curator, author, or gardener, it gradually became clear during our meetings that these labels need not limit our exhibitions at the Cursor gallery. Along with other invited participants, we explore questions concerning the materiality, visuality, and societal functions of reproductions, as well as how they contribute to our understanding of art and the ways in which we discuss it.
Four exhibitions will explore the theme through various filters, akin to colour registration. Firstly, art reproductions are presented as tangible objects with which we physically engage. Touch is a form of reception that returns the image to our hands. When we then focus our gaze on the reproductions, we begin to perceive them as an autonomous mode of viewing. Our attention is captivated by the “grammar” of the printing dot, the halftone screen, and the colour scheme. However, the reproduction is also a tool that not only conveys meaning but actively creates it – a medium capable of communicating without words and disrupting established ways of reading an image. This perspective opens up a space, at the conclusion of the exhibition series, for experimental meta-narratives and an exploration of how the repetition, transfer, and circulation of images blur the line between copy and original, between art and document, allowing a single work to be simultaneously an exclusive artefact and a copy of itself.
