Artist Talk and Book Launch with Barbora Šlapetová and Lukáš Rittstein

26 Mar 2024 7-9pm

Overview

Czech artists Barbora Šlapetová and Lukáš Rittstein will discuss their joint multi-media project ULTRA-SUPER-NATURAL

Czech artists Barbora Šlapetová and Lukáš Rittstein will discuss their joint multi-media project ULTRA-SUPER-NATURAL, an artistic statement reflecting on their numerous trips to Papua New Guinea and their encounters with ‚the last prehistoric people on Earth‘. The talk will be accompanied by photographs from their trips and will introduce a book trilogy of the same title.

In repeated expeditions (1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2006, 2008, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2021, 2022), Barbora Šlapetová and Lukáš Rittstein consistently returned to the same area of Papua to investigate, by artistic means, the leap in time of prehistoric people into the 21st century. During their returns, extensive artistic material has been produced in the form of Barbora's photographs, experimental films, drawings and Lukáš's sculptures, which have been born gradually as individual chapters in a dialogue spanning more than twenty years. The aim of these expeditions was not ethnological research, but an artistic perspective expressing the wonder of the meeting of two worlds separated by the gulf of time. The layered testimony of the two artists can symbolically be seen as a visual probe into the souls of the last natural people on this planet before they are affected by the culmination of globalisation. Over time, Papuan chiefs have expressed a desire to meet the greatest Czech chief, to understand who is and what does an artist, or to meet one who, like the local tribal magicians, can fly to the upper level of the world - that is, space. This has led to Stone Age chiefs collaborating with the President of the Czech Republic, Václav Havel, or transforming their real bodies into works of art. What can first be seen as documenting an exploratory expedition becomes, in the end, primarily art. We see a visual expression of transformation, opening up the possibility of gaining new contexts and escaping from the ordinariness of everyday life.

The most prominent Papuan chiefs believe that when any living being sleeps at night, its eyes travel to Heaven and watch back their sleeping bodies. Thus the stars shine. Another ability of selected persons is to travel through smoke to the upper level of the world, that is, to Heaven. All their stories are real and therefore true, because the natural is not separated from the supernatural...

Artists Barbora Šlapetová and Lukáš Rittstein on Ultra-Super-Natural

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Barbora Šlapetová and Lukáš Rittstein both graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague – Šlapetová in painting and Rittstein in sculpture. Barbora Šlapetová is a painter, photographer, and experimental filmmaker who has been collaborating with NASA in her art projects since 2009. She received the DAAD scholarship in Berlin 2000 and the Best Film Award at the Kyoto Biennale 2019. Lukáš Rittstein was the head of the Sculpture studio at Prague Academy of Fine Arts for ten years (2013–2023). In 1999 he received the Jindřich Chalupecký Award for best Young Czech artist. They both represented the Czech Republic at various international exhibitions. For their book Why the Night Is Black (Kant, 2005) they received the prestigious Czech award for literature, the Magnesia Litera Prize.
www.barboraslapetova.com
www.lukasrittstein.com

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