Vaclav Pozarek

The Kunstverein Bielefeld is delighted to present TUC (Turnstile Utter Chaos), a solo exhibition by Vaclav Pozarek. Born in 1940 in Budweis (Czechoslovakia, now Czech Republic) Pozarek today lives in Berne, Switzerland. His work is characterized by a combination of sculpture, drawing and photography, used along with architecture, printing, book design and typography. His artistic practice focuses on the conditions that constitute both artistic production and reception. Deliberately destabilizing the boundaries between art and its exterior, Pozarek undermines the traditional ordering principles used within, and constructed by, institutional and art-theoretical contexts.

Pozarek exhibits an ensemble of new objects, designed specifically for and with the architecture of the Kunstverein Bielefeld. It consists of simple materials, mostly wood, found or industrially manufactured, covered with ordinary commercial protective paint. Their formal structure makes reference to the shape of doors, boxes, or building components. The pieces are marked by open structures; they give new nuance to the vocabulary of modernity, against a backdrop of postmodern formal language. The witty, critical work reflects on art’s historicity, simultaneously disclosing and highlighting the contradictions and ambivalences within this historicity. Pozarek’s work offers some of our era's most precise analysis, constantly posing and reposing the question of what identifies art as such.

Pozarek's work has been shown in solo exhibitions at the Mitterrand Gallery, Paris (2020), the Francesca Pia Gallery, Zurich (2019), the Musée d'art moderne et contemporain (MAMCO) in Geneva (2018), the Barbara Wien Gallery, Berlin (2018), the Kunstmuseum Solothurn (2015), the Bündner Kunstmuseum, Chur (2012), the Kunsthaus Glarus (2006), and the Kunst Museum Winterthur (2004). His work has also featured in numerous group exhibitions, and was presented by the galleries Francesca Pia and Barbara Wien as part of Unlimited Art Basel 2019. In 2006, he was the recipient of the Prix Meret Oppenheim.

As part of Pozarek's solo exhibition at the Kunstverein Bielefeld, PAIR, an artist’s book, was produced.