Praha-Berlin Barter

In March/April 2019, Urban Spree Galerie, Berlin, invites Prague-based Trafo Gallery for a group show and gallery exchange. "Praha-Berlin Barter" will take place from 28.03.2019 to 21.04.2019 and will display the works of 8 prominent Czech artists from the gallery.

Curated by Trafo Gallery Director Blanka Čermáková, the group show oscillates between contemporary urban arts (Jan Kaláb, Michal Škapa), pop surrealism (Jan Vytiska), contemporary drawing, sculpture, digital art, animation (Jakub Janovský, Michal Čimala, Jakub Nepraš), and conceptual/geometric abstraction paintings (Robert Šalanda, Ira Svobodová). All artists have been involved in the old Trafacka space in Prague before its destruction and are actively involved into the new Trafo Gallery.

This group exhibition marks the first exchange between 2 independent European galleries sharing the same values and a similar history.

Trafacka was created in 2006 as a gallery and residential space located in an old power station in an industrial district of Prague.
After a couple of years, the place was occupied by more than 100 living and working artists in 36 studios, exhibiting in Trafo Gallery. More than 200 projects took place over the course of 8 years, until the place was finally destroyed in 2014. In 2016, the gallery managed to relocate in a former slaughterhouse (Vietnamese market of Prague, across the river from the historical center). Trafo Gallery was reborn with a 200 sqm gallery space and 4 artist studios. The artist-run gallery presents six exhibitions and six books per year with a focus on the new contemporary Czech art scene and the genres of street art, sculptures, abstraction painting, and digital art.

In the words of Blanka Čermáková, Director of Trafo Gallery: "One exhibition per year is a sort of barter with international projects and galleries which this year leads us to Berlin, city of art, angels and friends. Eight artists based in Prague, united with a long term bond to Trafo Gallery and our history, - Ira Svobodová, Jan Kaláb, Jakub Nepraš, Michal Cimala, Michal Škapa, Jan Vytiska, Robert Šalanda and Jakub Janovský - represent strong personalities and different art expressions. Ira Svobodová paints exact architectural compositions and builds perspective with colors and shadows, Jan Kaláb, a well known artist to Urban Spree with strong street art roots and perfect color and shapes styles, Jakub Nepraš shape sculptures as a platform for his vivid videocollages of microscopic worlds of nature and human babylons, Michal Cimala composes sculptures made often from collected material to existentialist compositions. Graffiti legend Michal Škapa works with urban scenery, apocalyptic and architecture destruction or using expressive colors when writing his crypted rune texts on canvases. Jan Vytiska is a painter of zombie romantic and surrealistic stories often based in forest neighbourhood or in postapocalyptic times. Robert Šalanda works with paper collages of abstract color shapes and transpose it to canvases where playfully upgrades new compositions with gradient colors. Last but not least Jakub Janovský is recognizable with his figurative drawings and often black and white coloring, silicon, enamel or airbrush outlines and ironic reflecting of society problems and characters. All of these artists, whether picturing abstract motives, displaying the view of their world around or in their visions, are the subatomic particles bonding Trafo Gallery fluidum together. Without them, Trafo Gallery would never exist".

In June 2019, Urban Spree's artists will be hosted in Prague by Trafo Gallery.