Opening: Julie Dostálová: BROKEN DISPLAY: FRAMED AGAIN

Julie Dostálová (b. 2002) is a visual artist whose path through art and culture leads her not only to the borderland between independent and commissioned work but currently above all to theory, writing, and practice in various cultural and educational institutions (especially the Olomouc Museum of Art). From 2017 to 2021 she studied painting and design at SŠDAM (Secondary School of Design and Fashion) in Prostějov. She then completed a bachelor’s degree in Art Studies at the Faculty of Arts, Palacký University Olomouc, where she also attended evening drawing classes.

She is currently continuing with a master’s degree in Theory and History of Fine Arts. Although she is presently focused more on the philosophy of art, she has not stopped making work and naturally gravitates toward existential conceptualism. Her research deals with art of the second half of the 20th century; archival research and its updated interpretive tools, together with interviews with artists and theorists, inspire her in discovering her own artistic strategies. In parallel, she writes art criticism and publishes scholarly work. She is an editor and co-founder of the emerging magazine Art.spot, which reflects on the Olomouc exhibition scene. She also helps organize cultural events and art education programs for children. She teaches art subjects at the Waldorf Secondary School in Olomouc. She takes on a range of diverse art commissions, from portraits to murals. Since 2017 she has been doing body painting.

In her independent work she addresses themes of human existence as well as social and gender issues, depicting beings who struggle on the apparent margins of society and do not meet aesthetic and other criteria. In echoes of postmodernism, she likes to blur the boundaries between art and life, disrupting public space, comfort zones, and normative thinking. She often pulls phenomena out of their established contexts and places them in new circumstances, asking uncomfortable questions — of others and of herself. Especially in her performative/happening projects, she invites contemplation and a reassessment of one’s life ideology and view of the surrounding world. She does not stop at her favorite media of drawing or painting — expressive sketches, for example, could be seen in recent months at an exhibition here in Uničov. Julie experiments with mixed techniques as well as conceptual spatial installations and alternative media — often in the form of “expanded painting.” She also incorporates ready-mades into her work, objects found for example at dumps or in squats, which she uses within exhibition ensembles. These have previously been shown at exhibitions in Prostějov and Olomouc.