Nostalgia Nostalgia is the suffering caused by the irresolvable craving for return. Etymologic roots of this word are linked with the Latin expression “ignorare” (to be unaware, lacking experience, to lack). In this light, nostalgia can be perceived as pain caused by ignorance, pain caused by unconsciousness. The exhibition’s title “Nostalgia” can thus evoke not only our craving for something what we do not know and will never know, but also for the impossibility to return somewhere, to something. It recalls us the situation of art which is the only means that can help us overcome our dread of our mortality. Nostalgia, as a non-definable sense, accompanies us through this time extracted from the unknown nothingness. The exhibition aims to be sentimental with a hint of subtle irony which helps us overcome our sadness and the very nostalgia. The selected works on display are thus characteristic of such a beauty that evokes emotion in viewers. Their selection was not subject to any sophisticated curatorial code. The group of works was compiled in the same way how, for example, a collector-amateur who does not want to be afraid of his paintings, would build his collection. In a way that the collection substituted him the world which he will not know and to which he cannot return. Or say – isn’t nostalgia present in the pizza and the fried egg from the Ikea rugs by Magdalena Kwiatkowska? Isn’t a pancake bigger than a man an unreachable dream? Isn’t the black and white view into jungle on the painting by Jiří Matoušek a pain caused by loss? Isn’t the deserted landscape of a suburban village by Tomáš Císařovský rather moving? Can one possibly resist the quite inappropriate kitschy deer by Tomáš Lahoda? And who would not fall into reverie face to face the wiretapping machine executed as a still-life by Antonín Střížek? Who would not plead guilty of one’s secret love for plastic tablecloths as did Dušan Šimánek in his photograph? Don’t we know the stories which we have never been taken to as in the manner of Petr Pastrňák, Pavel Reisenauer and Petr Králík? Fortunately, nothing else cannot be found in the exhibition than it actually contains. It is an attempt to pure exhibiting without side intentions; it is a kind of a nostalgic confectionery. Exhibiting artists: Tomáš Císařovský, Tomáš Lahoda, Antonín Střížek, Jiří Matoušek, Lukáš Karbus, Dušan Šimánek, Magdalena Kwiatkovska, Petr Pastrňák, Petr Králík, Pavel Reisenauer Museum of Art of the City of Benešov Till 31 August 2008
