©MARTIN POLÁK
The National Gallery in Prague has selected Stanislav Kolíbal to represent the Czech Republic at the 2019 Venice Biennale, with art historian Dieter Bogner set to curate the artist’s project.
Kolíbal’s work, titled Former Uncertain Anticipated, will play on oppositions between “stability and instability, unambiguity and ambiguity, [and] certainty and uncertainty,” according to a release. The artist will produce a wall drawing that will refer to the architecture of the pavilion itself, which was designed by Otakar Novotný in 1926.
Adam Budak, the chief curator of the National Gallery, said in a statement, “By selecting the project by Stanislav Kolíbal, the jury honors the outstanding pioneer of Czech avant-garde art and acknowledges his groundbreaking oeuvre which, spanning seven decades, speaks the fundamental language of both the late modern and contemporary times and keeps influencing young generations of artists. In doing so, the art of Kolíbal combines the formative past and the ambiguity of the present as well as it anticipates the unknown of the future.”