Cold, Warmer, Raging!

In researching Týn nad Vltavou, members of the curatorial team were struck by several factors that informed their thinking. For one, fire has played a persistent role in the history of the town - whether in the form of destructive blazes that damaged the buildings and infrastructure or in the form of the ongoing “fire” of the Temelín reactors, the proximal latent danger of which the town’s residents are aware. Parallel to the interest in fire was a consciousness that none of the students had been aware of before their opportunity to exhibit there. This led to discussions of Alois Riegl’s concept of the “far and near view”. This conception sees the “near view" as a tactile and planar perception that cannot embrace or interact with the context but can look at things in detail. “Far” or “optical” vision, however, takes into account volume and context in the broadest sense and allows for parallels and interactions up to the point of contact with the unknown.1 

These dual notions of “fire” combined with Riegl’s notions of perception vis-a-vis distance, therefore, resonated with the VA students as a compelling starting points and led to the development of the various works that are on display in this exhibition.