Opening ceremony of the exhibition: "Daniel Balabán: REBELION"

21.11.2024


On Wednesday, November 20, 2024, the Delegation of Prague tp the EU organized the opening ceremony of the exhibition of renowned Czech painter Daniel Balabán: REBELION. The exhibition was introduced by the artist himself together with curator Vilém Kabzan. The evening was accompanied by music by legendary Czech DJ Tráva & Ivan M Sax.

Rebel is a rioter, rebel, one who fights back, from the Latin re-bellum. However, the meaning of the word has shifted diametrically since the Middle Ages and today it has a nobler meaning. A rebel is a person who has a unique perspective on things. Rebellion is thus synonymous with freedom. Art has often outraged and subverted established social norms and artistic norms. Subversion is one of the ways to bring things into chaos or into an unbalanced state. This is often necessary for a new arrangement. All modern and postmodern art uses this method. Today, paradoxically, painting as a handmade artistic activity can outrage as an outdated, backward, and therefore irrelevant medium in relation to new digital media, which relativize the direct touch of the author. Painting prioritizes this touch and conveys it to the audience.

The aforementioned rebellion does not consist only in the painting of the same name, inspired by the performance of the group Extinction Rebellion, in this exhibition. It passes through other paintings, seemingly unproblematic, as a disruption or just a question about what is painted. An example could be the painting Breakfast in Lava depicting a Manetian picnic taking place on an active volcano. And similarly we could read other paintings that confirm the aforementioned disruption of idyll and beauty. However, the disruption does not only serve to negate, but to grasp the topic more broadly. It thus creates a counterpart to beauty, I would say necessary for its expression.

Daniel Balabán