Artwashing Kunsthalle Prague 2022– 2023 | Vladimír Turnerhttp://sgnlr.com/works/inside/artwashing-kunsthalle-prague2022-2023-prague/
Artwashing Kunsthalle Prague
Performance
Installation_ 3 canvases, 3 dibond prints, protest objects, coal, letter to Petr Pudil
Thanks to Bára Bažantová for textual collaboration; the organizers of the protest happening in front of Kunsthalle Praha; Petr Zewlakk Vrabec for the photo from the performance; Jakub Hrab for the photo from the gallery installation
During the opening ceremony of Kunsthalle Prague in February 2022, I performed a performance that worked with the transmission of performance- protest- commodification. The abstract black paintings on euro banknotes were created by spitting saliva. In front of the entrance to the Kunstahlle, opened by former coal miner Petr Pudil, I ate coal and spat the dyed saliva directly onto towels. I then washed them on the spot, stretched them onto frames like painters' canvases and then stuck them onto poles, making them into protest banners. With these, we then protested on the spot, under the supervision of several vans full of riot police, together with other artists against artwashing and the commercialization of art. Oligarch Petr Pudil made his first billions from the fossil fuel industry, which for the last 50 years has been identified by scientists around the world as one of the main reasons for the ecocide and climate collapse we are experiencing on a daily basis planet-wide. I offer the resulting paintings to Peter Pudil, one of the oligarchs behind the decay of democratic society. By buying the paintings at a price of 800,000,000 CZK, I am allowing Petr to wash his black conscience and I promise to stop making political art. This is how we will bring the potential of artwashing and commodification of revolt to a successful end.