With Theatre of Speaking Objects, the Kunstverein Braunschweig is presenting the first institutional solo exhibition of works by Eva Koťátková in Germany. In recent years, the Czech artist (*1982 in Prague) has created an extensive and internationally acclaimed oeuvre ranging from sculptures, installations, and performances to numerous fine drawings and collages that are reminiscent of works by the postwar avant-garde. She has produced a number of new works for the Kunstverein that are in part performative and deal with verbal and non-verbal communication.

Eva Koťátková’s works for the most part critically examine concepts of upbringing and education. Schools, offices, or retirement homes often serve as metaphors for human experiences, such as the loss of control, oppression, the pressure to achieve, or exclusion. With her installations composed of seemingly surreal collages, spatial structures, and so-called education machines she reveals regimented aspects and con-straints of social coexistence in an exaggerated way, however without pursuing informative goals.

The points of departure of her works are often books on educational science and psychology from the 1920s to the 1990s. In the collages in the series Work of Nature (2012), for instance, she combines illus-trations of people, animals, and plants with cage-like constructions that constrict them in their natural environment yet at the same time provide protection. Here, Koťátková inquires in bewilderment into people’s reasons for sometimes voluntarily allowing themselves to be restricted or conforming. The col-lages are supplemented by metal constructions that could serve, so to speak, as instruments of torture or orthopedic machines. The installation Theatre of Speaking Objects (2012) in the hall of mirrors of the Kunstverein consists of any number of seemingly everyday and at once strange objects. They tell stories that deal with individual problems within social structures. In their combination, Koťátková’s works at the Villa Salve Hospes create a stage-like setting that also makes palpable the absurd, dismal influences of writers such as Franz Kafka or Samuel Beckett.

Eva Koťátková studied in Vienna, San Francisco, and Prague and in recent years has participated in nu-merous international group exhibitions, including the Sydney Biennale 2012 and the Lyon Biennale 2011

Download floor plan (german)

The exhibition is being supported by:
Volkswagen Financial Services and
Niedersächsisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur