Zbyněk Baladrán

Videoprofile of Zbyněk Baladrán

“Zbyněk Baladrán is among the most interesting young Czech artists in recent years. He often works with found visual, sound and textual material. By way of a method of deconstruction, he arrives at unexpected reinterpretations of historical documents, often in the form of video projections.” (Jury statement)

Zbyněk Baladrán (born 1973) studied art history at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, then at the Studios of Visual Communication, Painting and New Media at the Academy of Fine Arts. He works mainly with video in an archival context, collects old materials, reinterprets them and adds written commentaries to them. In his films, he searches for the connections between the past and how it is constructed vis-à-vis prevailing epistemological patterns. He also works as a curator and exhibition architect. Baladrán is a co-founder of the Display Association for Research and Collective Practice, where he contributes to the exhibition program. He is a co-curator of the Monument Transformation project and exhibition, a three-year research project on social and political transformation, and co-curator of Manifesta 8 in Murcia, Spain. In 2004, Baladrán was nominated for the Manifesta contemporary art show. He has had a number of solo exhibitions abroad, notably at Trapéz Gallery in Budapest and State of Concept in Athens.