Jakub Adamec studied in Ostrava in the class of Petr Lysáček (2002-2007), and he is a member of the group I love 69 Popgeju – a project, which at that time represented the “Ostrava scene” in the context of the upcoming generation.
Jakub Adamec comes from Valašské Meziříčí. He studied there at the secondary school of art, architecture and design, where he met Pavel Pernický. The two of them founded the music group IL69PG in 2001, and they are keeping it alive together to this day. While the group was active in Ostrava it consisted also of Zdeněk Vichr and Petr Štark. This originally secondary school music group naturally became also an art group, but the founding members themselves do not differentiate between the musical and visual positions. IL69PG can be labelled as a vibrating visualised group identity built with essential directness.
Back then, quite a few people came from Valašské Meziříčí to study in Ostrava, but Popgejs were the first. Pavla Malinová, Pavel Ptáčník and Jan Vytiska had the music group Like She; Pavel Pernický and Tereza Krainova have been performing as Marius Konvoj – their common label got the name “Vole love production”, which regularly organized the Festival Nuova. Many texts about IL69PG are full of citations from their songs, which apparently most fittingly depict the energy and trash character of their audio-visual production – posters, projections, costumes and requisites.
Jakub Adamec is also the founder of the cellar gallery Strážná věž (Watchtower) (2005-2007). He concluded two years of non-systematic exhibition programme (Record, Rafani, Václav Stratil, 103 coil, and others) by a friendly football match played on grass brought down to the cellar from the garden for this purpose. (It was sad to see the IL69PG installation at the exhibition Aloha ovar nuova (Václav Špála Gallery, 2008) as it evoked the not yet distant spirit of the last strong phase of the readability of the “Ostrava scene”.)
As Lumír Nykl puts it well in his text to his last exhibition, the scope to the work of Jakub Adamec consists of his interest in history (as well as art history) and his personal history. Adamec creates an environment closest to him by his self representation, self historizing and visionary self projection in satirically disrupting contexts of the world of art and personal testimonies – personal identity as a “community” (Lumír Nykl), art as a medium for change, where goodness is the basic motive. Since 2012, Jakub Adamec has been working as a curator at the Gallery of the City of Třince. His Třince mission, as well as his previous projects with Magda Jańczuk (Something over the rainbow, 2008; Tree of Happiness, 2009) cross the boundaries of artistic ambition, as well as personal alternativeness, and they are wide opened challenges for art and life.
