Official unveiling: 6 November 2021 / curator: Veronika Marešová
Adéla Matasová (1940), a member of the Umělecká Beseda living and working in Prague, is a highly recognised multimedia artist, as evidenced by the fact that she was awarded the 2021 Ministry of Culture Award for her contribution to the field of fine art, in particular for her lifelong artistic and educational activities and, most importantly, for her influence on establishing multimedia approaches on the Czech art scene.
Matasová is a graduate of professor Vladimír Sychra’s studio of monumental painting at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts. In 1968, she spent two months in France thanks to a stipend from UNESCO. In the 1970s, she began to intensively work with paper – not just through prints and drawings, but later also in reliefs, three-dimensional objects and installations. Since 1989, she has systematically work on object-based installations. These always incorporate sound, which she chooses from compositions by musicians working the field of minimal art.
Her works have been shown at a number of international exhibitions, including ART 17 in Basel (1987), CIAE in Chicago (1987) and the Festival of Czech Art in New York (1994). In 2004, she held a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, Colorado.
From 1990 to 2003, Matasová was a professor at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, first in the studio of alternative techniques and later in the studio of conceptual and intermedia art. In 2000, she accepted a position as guest professor in the field of intermedia art and sculpture at the University of Colorado in Boulder. In 2004–2005, she was vice rector for artistic activities at the Josef Škvorecký Literary Academy, and in 2005–2012 she taught in Pilsen at the University of West Bohemia’s Institute of Art and Design (today the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art).
Rain Wall IV is a contemporary sculptural work in a public space by which the artist intervenes into the architecture of the bastion that forms a part of the gardens of the Jesuit College (GASK). With this work, Matasová loosely follows on Rain Wall, presented in 1998 at the “Mapping Space” international sculpture symposium at Klenová Castle, where she organically combined the castle’s medieval walls with the modern look of aluminium rods sprouting from openings in scaffolding attached to the walls.
The current installation again works interactively with the context of its surroundings, taking into account its proximity to the Church of St. Barbara, allegedly built above an underground lake. The nine spouts of Rain Wall IV metaphorically, in the form of the aluminium rods, imitates flowing water and, through both sound and movement, responds to the current weather conditions in Kutná Hora. This outdoor work of art heralds the large forthcoming exhibition Metasystems, which will take a detailed look at Adéla Matasová’s work and which, despite its retrospective character, will be based not on chronological order but will begin with her newest works, accompanied by analogous pieces from earlier in her career.