The World of Jindřich Chalupecký is an umbrella term for the research and expansion of the archival materials, curatorial and theoretical work related to the figure of Jindřich Chalupecký, particularly contemporary references to his life and work, including the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. In connection with this, we held exhibitions running parallel with the exhibition of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award exhibition between 2017 and 2019. Like the CJCh, the exhibitions took place alternately in Prague and Brno - each time, however, in the city in which the Award was not currently being bestowed. In addition to contextualizing and critically analyzing how we organize the artist competition, the motivation for this activity was also an effort to fill in the blank spaces in our own archives, which were lacking more detailed photographic documentation of artworks and exhibitions created in connection with the CJCh, as well as the content and conceptual clues necessary to understand works presented many decades ago, even entire chapters related to the organization of the Award and the Society in certain time spans.
In 2017, we presented an exhibition called The Ripple Effect at the Centre for Contemporary Art Futura in Prague, which exhibited a selection of works by young artists who had applied for the CJCh finals for that year, but were not selected by the jury. The exhibition was a curatorial speculation on the competition’s themes, the game of art and its rules. In 2018, we held the exhibition The Spectator is Worth an Award at the TIC gallery in Brno, which was a contemplative look at the previous winners of the Spectator Prize, awarded alongside the CJCh since 2002, and also a reflection on the spectator’s role and value system in contemporary art. In the fall of 2019, we prepared a series of eight one-day exhibitions entitled The Jindřich Model, in which artists who had been Jindřich Chalupecký Award finalists ten years prior or longer revisited their works and projects created for the occasion, reflecting critically upon the relevance of those works today.
In 2020, on the occasion of the Jindřich Chalupecký Society’s 30th anniversary, we prepared a project called The World We Live In?. This site-specific theatrical production and installation was followed by a symposium entitled Chalupecký in the World and a performative film by Julie Béna, Letters from Prague, as the first public outputs of our long-term research and curatorial and theoretical work dedicated to the figure of Jindřich Chalupecký. In the coming years, we will continue with further exhibitions and publications, including a major exhibition, The World of Jindřich Chalupecký, which will be held in the spring of 2022 at the Municipal Library / Prague City Gallery. The individual projects build upon and intertwine with each other. The documentation and outputs from each phase of this project will be presented in this experimental exhibition and provide the basis for further research and the creation of new artworks, texts and other formats.