Hardly comprehensible for the layman, the complex web of economic, political, military – and yes, also artistic – relations within global neoliberalism is at the center of Zbyněk Baladrán’s exhibition “Mapping the Invisible (Obituary #2)” . Curated by Daniel Grúň, the exhibition includes text and image panels depicting the power practices of global capitalism (S&P Global [Stratigraphy Rating]2020) as well as schematic works such as Curly, 2022, which borrows the pictographic aesthetic of Otto Neurath’s Isotype to depict perverse working conditions categorized under such headings as “No Reward Without Work”, “Workers Departing the Establishment” or “Private Initiatives Take You to the moon “. On the other side of the room, Image Index, 2022, offers an arrangement of twenty fragmented reliefs. Although formally reminiscent of elements of an excavation site, the panels are in fact jumbled mock-ups of textbooks intended for after the seemingly inevitable collapse of neoliberalism, addressing a post-humanist – and therefore more fully readable – world.
Known for his in-depth research, Baladrán brings together his recent works under the sign of obituaries. In medicine, the term refers to the study of the phenomena of death, including the physical transformations that occur in a body that no longer lives. It studies decline in the broadest sense. Social disintegration and “the rotting corpse of capitalism,” as Grúň writes in the curator’s statement, is also evident in the exhibition’s architecture, which recycles veneered panels from old cabinets, cupboards and chests. In the juxtaposition of brown, white and black veneer hues, Baladrán makes visible the moments of fragmentation and the parallels between the modes of production of the contemporary art world and those of capitalism more broadly.
