Since the start of his career, Michal Koleček has been closely linked with Ústí nad Labem and the local art scene, despite the fact that his curatorial and theoretical work stretches far beyond the boundaries of both region and republic. In the 1990s he was curator of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the National Gallery and at the Soros Centre of Contemporary Art Prague. He often collaborated with the Václava Špála Gallery and also, thanks to his focus on the contemporary art of Central Europe, with institutions operating in this sphere, e.g. the <rotor> association for contemporary art, Graz, Riesa Efau in Dresden, Galeria Arsenal in Białystok, etc.
Despite this busy diary he remains committed to shaping the Ústí art scene, from its beginnings in the 1990s linked with the Ústí neo-conceptual circle (Černický, Thelenová, Kopřiva, Kolečková), the transformation of the Emil Filla Gallery into the form that we know today, and the creation of the Faculty of Art and Design at the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University. He remains a member of the management of these institutions. He worked at the faculty in the position of head of the department of art theory and history, and was vice-dean for studies and development. Above all he established a course in curatorship based on his own understanding of this function.
Koleček believes that the curator operates in the interstice between the present, institutions, the artist and the public. They fill in a white space and creates links. They assist during the production of artworks, transport them from studio to gallery, interpret them and integrate them into the wider world of art and its history. In this spirit Koleček focuses on three typical circles: the relationship between the periphery and the centre, contemporary Central European art in the process of socio-cultural transformation, and the relationship of contemporary art and the broader societal context.
An example of the first circle would the projects Parallel Histories and From the Centre Outwards. The first of these was first presented as part of the exhibition Formats of Transformation 89–09 at the House of Art, Brno, and later as an independent, expanded show in the Northern Bohemian Gallery of Fine Art in Litoměřice and at GASK in Kutná hora. The theme was the Ústí scene as an example of peripheral cultural activity so typical for the development of Czech art after 1989, i.e. decentralisation. The exhibition was conceived of as museum art. It comprised a collection of artefacts representing individual years of the existence of the local scene taken from video archives, studies and accompanying publications. It reacted to a situation in which for the whole of its existence the Ústí scene encountered a lack of interest, criticism and reflection on the part of museum collections, and attempted to minimise this element by at least gathering together and archiving all the available materials. We might regard the exhibition from a broader perspective as a representative of regional scenes in the Czech Republic, all of which encounter the same problems. The project From the Centre Outwards reflects all regional scenes in the CR. It was presented at the West Bohemian Gallery in Pilsen and at the Kunsthalle / Hale umenia in Košice. It conducted research into regional scenes and examined the question of whether the individual scenes had some specific quality linking them together. It looked at artistic activities within the environment in which they are pursued.
In the second thematic realm, i.e. the sphere of contemporary Central European art in the process of socio-cultural transformation, the relationship between periphery and centre is transforming itself analogously into a broader context. From 1989 onwards the region of Central Europe brought together Western countries with countries that had experienced totalitarianism. These interests are best examined in Koleček’s work at the exhibitions Rhythmic Exercises (part of the Galicia project Topographies of Myth: Contemporary Art of the National of the Former Austro-Hungarian Empire) or the exhibition at the Emil Filla Gallery To snad ani nemůže být pravda / That Can’t Be True.
Interest in space and environment and the social transformation thereof then involved site-specific interventions involving audience participation. These took place mainly as part of the project Art of Urban Intervention, which presented the city as a dynamic element with all of its pros and cons and its grey, invisible zones. The artists entered these spaces and transformed them, sometimes temporarily sometimes permanently, by means of their interventions and with the collaboration of the local community. A similar principle was at work in the case of the project University of Předlice realised by the Faculty of Art and Design. Depending on their own work and the focus of their studios, students were inspired by one of the more dismal districts of Ústí.
Koleček often works with a relatively large team of curators, theoreticians and specialists. His projects are multidisciplinary and always transcend the boundaries of fine art.
