Lucie Doležalová, Iveta Schovancová: Houses Are Built from the Ground Up

The exhibition revolves around a core which is the process of art creation and the construction of new meanings upon countless layers of signification. Lucie Doležalová and Iveta Schovancová, each in their own way, return to the foundation as a space that is weighted, worn, and transformed by use. They approach it from different perspectives – through remnants, slits, and deviations. They turn the notion of a building or structure inside out. It is not a building with a clear function, but rather building as a process arising from an absence of function. It is a game that derives meaning from itself, through careful folding, bending, covering, layering, overlaying, and disruptions.

Iveta’s work includes abandoned objects that have ceased to function, rational schemes lacking a code, no longer fulfilling their original purposes. When this bond is broken, an empty space is created. This space opens up to another form of meaning: unclear, unstable, and of the moment. In Lucie’s drawings, form arises from bodily perceptions, feelings, and memories which, like worn-out material, are detached from their moment of origin. Here, the corporeal functions as an archive of movements and feelings that no longer relate to specific situations or impulses and thus, in a manner similar to discarded objects, create interstices – spaces where a different meaning is born.

Even a structure without function can stumble at any point. Material can break, a movement may repeat without consequence, a gesture can falter. That which should have borne meaning remains only a piece of matter, a body in tension, an object without purpose. This approach carries the following risk: the absence of function may outweigh any emergent meaning; the original material will remain itself. This risk is intentional, as the chosen method consciously rejects the modernist “point zero”. Meaning is not released violently – it arises from ambiguity.

In this exhibition, arché is not manifested as the absolute beginning, but as the worn-down foundation of a paradoxical structure that rests upon layers of memory. We have a similar view of Studio Prám itself, situated in a former laundry hall. New meaning takes root where the original function has faded, just as the absence of physical labour that once filled the space gives way to new forms of movement.

Even the clearest forms originate in the forgotten chambers of the mind, in the storage spaces and recesses, in the interstices, in the chaos of the world. Houses are built on foundations, but these foundations are not pure. They are well worn and open to other meanings.

The project is implemented with financial support from City of Prague and State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic.