Moments

The titular exhibition of the SEFO Triennial was prepared for the main exhibition hall of the Museum of Modern Art by the curators Martina Mertová, Martin Fišr, and Jakub Frank. Seventeen artists will present works they created for the Triennial or updated or adapted for the given theme. The space will be inhabited by large installations, true monuments of their time, objects and videos that function as archives or documentation of both the present and the past, or minimal and ephemeral interventions that may be just inconspicuous imprints on the timeline.

The timeline, both in retrospect and looking into the future, offers many MOMENTS when chosen, analysed, and named fixed points lose their validity and stability, undergoing transformations in perception, acceptance, or even crises. The objects we focus on in the SEFO 2024 Triennial are represented by a set of concepts borrowed from the art historian, theorist, and curator Octavian Eşanu. We adapt his triad of Monument – Document – Mockument in the concept of the Triennial and measure it against the current concept of momentariness.

MOMENTS for us do not only represent unstable points on the timeline but also enable the examination and comparison of experiences, long processes, and critical turns. The Triennial aims to work with those moments when we touch our own history and memory, and when we construct their image through art and architecture.

MONUMENTS, in the concept of the Triennial, represent presumed certainties of the past and present. Imagine monuments, landmarks, and entire protected complexes as products of social agreements or historical constructs, exploring objects both worthy and unworthy of protection, tangible and intangible, materialised memory, and care for it or the absence thereof.
The tools we use to systematise the knowledge of memory (and here we touch directly on the essence of the organising institution) are encompassed by the term DOCUMENT.
The tool of the experiment is MOCKUMENT, which introduces mystification or irony into interpretive processes, challenging myths based on the reality of previously unequivocal facts.

Artists

Zsólt Asztalos, Michaela Černická, Vendula Chalánková, Andreas Fogarasi, Karolina Grzywnowicz, Martin Horák, Aglaia Konrad, Robert Kuśmirowski, Marek Kvetan, Dorit Margreiter Choy, Ilona Németh and Marián Ravasz, Tobias Putrih and Ardalan Sadeghikivi, Vojtěch Radakulan, Ala Savashevich, Matěj Smetana, Martin Zetová.