Galerie 207

Like UM and NIKA galleries, 207 Gallery was closely associated with the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. 207 Gallery was established in 2008 as a studio initiative directly at the Academy, tying up on work of the Studio of Intermedia Confrontation and aiming to “professionalize the approach to professions that are linked to gallery activities” (Petr Krátký in: Petr Krátký (ed.), Galerie 207, Prague 2018). Albeit not a student gallery in the sense that it would be set up solely by students, students to a large extent participated in its operation. And not only as exhibiting artists, but also as part of a production team led by a more experienced teacher/curator (see list of curators below). Thanks to this, the project functioned primarily as an educational platform. 207 Gallery discontinued its activities in 2020.

207 Gallery was founded in 2008 by Marek Meduna, a member of the group Rafani and at that time also a lecturer at the Studio of Intermedia Confrontation (substituting for Jiří David who was on sabbatical), together with the Studio’s Assistant Professor, Milan Salák. The 3 x 4 m exhibition space was located in the corner of the Atelier of Intermedia Confrontation in room no. 207, enclosed by temporary plasterboard walls. Unlike its sister galleries (UM and NIKA), 207 Gallery never had a permanent location and was moved several times inside the building. Apart from its original location, it was also situated in the Painting Studio (307) and the Photography Studio (405), among other spaces. The initial concept of “two-hundred-and-seven” consisted of a rapid succession of presentations by external and established artists alternating with performances by students of the resident studio. Every Monday, a new exhibition was opened followed the next day by a discussion with the artist, introducing her or his work and creative methods. In the first year of the gallery operation the exhibiting guests included Vladimír Skrepl, Tomáš Hlavina, Alena Kotzmannová, Radim Labuda, Tomáš Vaněk, Martin Zet and Fraser Blockehurst.

During the twelve years of the gallery’s existence, the role of a curator has been continuously replaced by many personalities of contemporary visual culture, while a theoretical or curatorial background was not necessarily a prerequisite. In 2009 Marek Meduna and Milan Salák were replaced by another member of the Rafani art group: Luděk Rathouský. In 2011, Edith Jeřábková and Blanka Švédová, a curatorial duo of art historians and theoreticians, came in his place. Curator-artist and teacher Václav Magid took the gallery over in 2012. Following was Pavel Sterec in 2014, a former student of the Studio of Photography. Petr Krátký, a graduate of the Studio of Intermedia Confrontation, has been the last head of the gallery since 2015. Close collaboration with students in the operation of the gallery was a characteristic approach of all of the curators. The curator’s role was therefore closer to that of a lecturer who influences the project’s development. As a matter of fact, 207 Gallery became also accredited as a course for which students received credits.

Despite the wide range of media and approaches that 207 Gallery has been able to present during more than 200 exhibitions, its more specific focus can be derived mainly from the individual leading personalities and their terms as curators. Especially in recent years, for example, under the leadership of Petr Krátký, there has been a tendency to present younger artists and more experimental projects, while in the first years of its operation more established names appeared in the list of exhibitors.

The scope of the presented works mainly fell within the sphere of intermedia, predominantly having the form of site-specific installations. For instance, Eva Koťátková in her exhibition Pokoj 207 in 2011 worked with the gallery exhibition space as a metaphor for the isolated mental hospital room in Bethlehem, England. A year earlier, at the Zahrada exhibition, Yumiko Ono had moved a precisely measured gallery space to the garden of the Academy of Fine Arts, where she picked out all stones and then moved their casts back to the grounds of the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design. In the same year, Michal Kohút actually disassembled the whole 207 Gallery and made it disappear for a week.

Confrontation was an important and quite fundamental element for the gallery. The students’ direct encounters with more experienced artists and open discussion of their own and others’ work allowed the format of the Studio of Intermedia Confrontation to be transferred to the exhibition space and the students’ work to critically evolve even “outside” their studio. This model was then – as already mentioned – further developed in 2011 thanks to the establishment of a course called 207 Gallery, which was open not only to students of the aforementioned studio, but also students of the Department of Theory and History of Art. One of the integral parts of the course was writing peer reviews, in which students could again practice critical thinking and at the same time contribute to building the gallery’s archive.

In 2018, the VŠUP Publishing House published the catalogue of 207 Gallery to mark its tenth anniversary. Given the online form of most of the exhibition materials and records, it serves as an important document and provides an interesting excursion into the past of this project that ceased to exist on 31 December 2020 after an internal discussion at the Department of Liberal Arts and the decision to take the gallery in a different direction. In the future, however, the school plans to offer two new courses that will be loosely related to the activities of 207 Gallery.

2020 (ONLINE)

Kateřina Vincourová - Jsme tu všichni

Jan Pfeiffer - Něco víme, něco hledáme

Matěj Kos – Důsledek

Riccardo D’Avola-Corte, Jiří Procházka, Eulalie Polne – Can’t Forgive II

Sofie Tobiášová, Masha Kovtun – Ghost Orchid

Světlana Malinová, Matěj Martinec – The Unity of Monoculture

Vladimir Omutov – Stratum

2019

Dante Daniel Hartl – Strach ze strachu

Tereza Velíková – Mimo pointu

Denis Baštuga a Anna Pašková - Rebirth IV. – BACTIHUB

Anna Stepanova - PRAVIDLA POSLUŠNOSTI

Václav Kopecký - Untitled: Sky

EPOS 207

Jiří Procházka & Eulalie Polne - GIRL AND THE SUN

Štěpánka Šimlová - Mikropříběh

Jakub Ra – AirDropMe

David Nosek - Feed Me Like a King

2018

Jan Šimsa – Tahem

Dana Bartoníčková – My brain, My battle field

Eva Červená – Erory

Tomáš Predka – Dopamin

Jan Kvíz - Krev není voda aneb Bože, jak napsat text, když docházej slova

Markéta Magidová – Odložená slavnost

Václav Krůček – SHIRIN

Holzingerurbat – Start down

Martina Staňková – Triangle

2017

Tomáš Alfery – Resuscitace podhoubí

Lenka Klodová –Intrinsecus

Václav Litvan – Lehčí než vzduch

Darina Alster – Earth Versions

Samuel Brzeski – We are in time

APL 315 – WTD?

PIMLICO – hudební performance

Kryštof Strejc – Radical Times in Paradise

Veronika Drahotová – Stupně svobody

Jake Blaschka – Chroma Key

2016

Antonín Jirát – Completely Out of It

Zuzana Žabková –Helio x Kato

Pavel Příkaský – Strach ze tmy

Anna Slama a Marek Delong – Incentive 2

Tomáš Hrůza – Životem nahoru / Vzpomínkami dolů

Viola Fátyol – If you have a heart, what you did to me hurts you too

Mira Gáberová – Modrozelená

Filip Turek – Funkce a styl

Marek Tischler – Za klenotem do tvého nitra 2

Kryštof Kučera – Lesy jsou v ohni, řekl otec, ale vody se nevaří

Kristina Laníková a Johana Střížková – 25 vět

2015

Výstavní blok: Fyzické sdílení (umění), Sbírka odlitků antické plastiky, host: Lenka Vacinová

Výstavní blok: Fyzické sdílení (umění), Akustika hackerspacu, host: BrmLab

Výstavní blok: Fyzické sdílení (umění), Vzdělávání pro všechny – výstava k zapůjčení, host: Marie Fulková

Výstavní blok: Nepodmíněný pohyb, Rezidenti, hosté: Petr Borkovec, Zuzana Jakalová, Michal Novotný, Matěj Smetana, Miloš Vojtěchovský

Výstavní blok: Nepodmíněný pohyb, Netahat za kratší konec provazu, host: Vojtěch Fröhlich

Petr Dub – IN-SUE-LIE14

David Přílučík – Train for Mutuality

Romana Drdová – Un Ange Passe

Katharina Swobodova (a) – Living Images

2014

Ivan Kafka – Omšení 1982–1999

Petr Šprincl – VAJCAJ

Luis de Los Santos, Hansgrohe, Richard Nikl, BSTJ, Frances Malthouse, Birdseye, Gerhard Abel, Kim Laughton, Corawindows, Bea Fremderman, UN Recommended Box Jellyfish, Weitzer Parkett, Paul Kooiker, Ardex, Snailprocreation a další – Exhibition Sample

Začátek

Anna Hulačová – Druhá, třetí a pátá říše

Martin Lukáč – Dřevo, železo a mrdání

Daniela Baráčková – Píčus

Jan Nálevka – ISO 216

Michal Cáb – 3R0RR

Matouš Lipus – Oáza

Matyáš Chochola – Všechny bytosti, která se nám neustále smějí

2013

Tomáš Uhnák – O skvělé chuti gulbi se hovoří i v pohádkách. Jeden lakomec si je prý pověsil na strop, a zatímco jedl rýži, stačilo se mu na gulbi pouze díva

Anne-Claire Barriga – Akcelerace

Michal Czanderle – Brigáda

Alžběta Bačíková – Věž

Mara Infidelious a Kryštof Vancl – Ad nauseam

RAFANI – O novém

Nik Timková – 20%

David Krňanský – Koberec

Jana Stanulová – Sebevýklad – živý film

Daniel Pitín – Vedlejší role

Dominik Forman – Práce

2012

Barbora Pivoňková – Jsme tu pro nás

Viktorie Valocká – Řešení problému s měsícem

Robert Šalanda – Černý pasažér

Lenka Vítková – Malá odvážná země

Roman Štětina – Popis obrazu

Martin Horák – Martin

Lucie Buchvald – Michal Kindernay – Lubomír Rothbauer – Jan Žalio: Příběhu se nevyhneš

Petr Písařík – Jeto taktak nebo tak?

Juliana Höschlová – Tančí, jak pískáš

Dušan Zahoranský – Kabinet lingvistického kroužku

Kamran Diba – Hřejivé a lidské. Lidská přítomnost v zastavěném prostředí

2011

Jan Zdvořák – hlavní technik – Jonáš Strouhal

Martin Hrubý – Modelová situace

Eva Koťátková – Pokoj 207

Libor Uher – Modul – obraz

Alžběta Říhová – Situation Of

Hynek Vacek: V jed(z)ení

Sláva Sobotovičová, Model toho

Jan Haubelt: Pád školní židle, zátiší s lilií v čase

Vojtěch Fröhlich: Prototyp

Jiří Skála: Předzvěst č. 1 a Třetí skupina předmětů

Ondřej Reichel: Jelikož mne nikdo nezná, takže nikdo nepřijde

Andrew Gilbert: Trophies of the Savages / Trofeje divochů

2010

Marek Meduna – Permanence

Milena Dopitová – So late, it´s early

Jiří Franta / David Böhm – Vedlejší efekt

Mark Ther – "Naši Němci" („Němci z Česka" „Deutschen aus Tschechien", „čeští Němci“ „tschechische Deutschen" oder „Tschechien-Deutschen")

Aleš Novák – Kláda

Jakub Hošek – Efekt motýlích křídel

Yumiko Ono – Zahrada

Richard Štipl – Oblivious obvious

Lubomír Typlt –Tak se může smát jen cizinec

Jiří Ptáček – Galerijní situace 1

Jiří David – Ty nejsi já ty

2009

Josef Bolf – Death

Helena Sequensová / Adam Stanko, Vlastenka a Patriot

Jiří Kovanda – „a mohl bych ochutnat?“

Michal Pěchouček – Hodiny v umění

Ondřej Brody – Databáze

Ivan Vosecký – A já jsem největší malíř 20. století

Inna Lewinson– I love art

Jiří Černický – Neakční nemalba

Petra Herotová – 100% Blue

Marek Bureš – Všichni jsou si rovni

Petr Krátký – Best of Better

Radim Labuda – Zvednout a nést (vybrané performance podle YouTube)

Conrad Armstrong – Bold Counsel

Petr Malina – Večer se blíží

2008

Luděk Rathouský – Úvozem

Frase Brocklehurst – Westgate story

Veronika Neumannová – Zábory

Alena Kotzmannová, Spící Kotzmann 1997-2008

Noam Darom – Babiččin průvodce: Jak ulovit kyklopa

Marie Haškovcová, Nikdo nečte (host výstavy Jiří Valoch)

Michal Panoch – Recese

Tomáš Vaněk – Particip č. 90: Sdílené povrchy