Art that moves and shines by itself

Exhibition looks at role of electricity in installations, creations

The Kunsthalle Praha, which opened in the former Zenger Electrical Substation here in February, is not the first exhibition space in a former power station. Yet from the start, this privately funded redevelopment opposite Prague Castle is putting electrically powered art in the spotlight with its opening exhibition “Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art,” running through to 20 June.

Featuring almost 100 artworks, the exhibition shows how electricity transformed art over the past century, enabling artificial lighting and motion. With the arrival of household electricity in the ’20s, artists had new options available to them: they were no longer limited to static images and reliant on external light sources.

How much electricity revolutionised art is not always well appreciated, said Peter Weibel, the exhibition’s curator. Unlike in the field of music, where electric instruments and amplifiers were embraced, he said, “In the art world, unplugged art – like painting and sculpture – is so highly valued, and art that uses electricity is debunked.”

“There is a lack of understanding,” Weibel said. “This hegemony of painting and sculpture,” he added, was “an injustice to art”.

The Kunsthalle Praha’s opening exhibition shows how the rapid technological advances of the past century inspired successive generations of artists, from the early days of cinematography to computer art. Works by Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy are displayed alongside contemporary works by Tokyo-based art collective teamLab and Danish Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson, whose “Lightwave” installation greets visitors as they arrive.

Weibel, who leads the ZKM Centre for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, said the exhibition’s starting point was the work of Zdenek Pesanek, a Czech artist who died in Prague in 1965. Pesanek was a pioneer of what is known as kinetic art – art that depends on motion for its effects. (His 1941 book Kinetismus gives the exhibition its name.)

Pesanek had a direct link to the Zenger Electrical Substation building: in the ’30s, he designed a cycle of allegorical sculptures for the building’s facade, made of industrial materials with built-in neon tubes, and symbolising concepts related to electricity, such as the principle of an electric motor. Yet the sculptures never made it onto the facade. They were presented at the International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life in Paris in 1937, but subsequently vanished in unclear circumstances. (The exhibition opens with preparatory models of the sculptures.)

Another of Pesanek’s works, “The Spa Fountain”, featuring two translucent torsos made of synthetic resin, lit from the inside by colored lightbulbs and curved neon tubes, sits at the heart of the exhibition. It was made in 1936 to celebrate thermal spa culture in what was then Czechoslovakia.

“Electricity was such a symbol of modernity,” said Matthew Rampley, a professor of art history at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. This was why Pesanek and his contemporaries found it so alluring, he added.

The exhibition is part of a plan by the Kunsthalle Praha’s founders to jazz up the local art landscape.

The institution was established by Petr Pudil, a Czech entrepreneur whose career has spanned industries from coal to real estate, and his wife, Pavlina Pudil. The Pudil Family Foundation, which the Pudils set up to promote Czech and international modern and contemporary art, bought the building in 2015. The purchase and renovation cost €35 million (about R495 million).

“Our mission was to set up an institution focused on contemporary and partially modern art in an international context,” Petr Pudil said. In addition to bringing top-quality art to Prague from abroad, the Kunsthalle Praha will also give a platform to emerging artists from Central Europe, he added.

“We have a lot of freedom, because we are a nongovernmental and nonprofit institution,” said Pavlina Pudil, adding that the Kunsthalle Praha will be funded by the foundation and through membership fees.

Travel and tourism can make a difference – if conducted in an ethical, moral and responsible way – to society ... from climate change to uplifting people from poverty.

The New York Times team of writers annually choose places you should visit if you are aware of a changed and changing, world, and you’d like to be part of that.

Cleveland, Ohio

Dinner isn’t usually part of the prisoner reentry system, but at Edwins Leadership and Restaurant Institute in Cleveland’s Buckeye-Shaker neighbourhood, the mission is larger than braised artichokes and Burgundy snails: it is to teach former prisoners a new trade.

Founded by Brandon Chrostowski, a classically trained chef, Edwins includes a fine-dining French restaurant, bakery, butcher shop and event space, all open to the public.

The campus has a test kitchen, apartments and basketball courts, and Edwins buys and refurbishes buildings in the underserved neighbourhood. A culinary class is available in US prisons.

The institute gives former inmates a place to live rent-free (relocation fees are paid in part by the Cleveland Browns football team), a driver’s license, legal counselling and healthcare.

“It’s not just about a wonderful restaurant, it’s not just about reentry,” said councilman Blaine Griffin. “This is social entrepreneurship at its best.”

– Danielle Pergament

El Hierro, Spain

A few hundred miles off the coast of Morocco, flung out in the middle of the Atlantic, is El Hierro, the most remote – and, some say, the most charming – of the Canary Islands.

It’s also a pint-size leader in renewable energy.

In 2014, El Hierro opened Gorona del Viento, a power plant that uses a system of reservoirs and wind to supply the island’s electricity (wind provides power while pumping water into reservoirs; hydraulic turbines take over when the wind dies down; diesel supplies a fallback when both those sources are lacking).

Recently, Gorona del Viento was able to supply the island’s 11 000 inhabitants with 100% renewable energy for 25 consecutive days.

As the infrastructure of El Hierro plants one foot in the future, the island’s cultural identity keeps the other rooted in the past.

El Hierro’s historic language, Silbo Herreño, is one of the last whistling languages in the world.

When the island’s elders noticed the Herreño whistle was dying out, the cultural association began offering free classes after school, at weekend markets and to the island’s shepherds (who traditionally communicate by whistling).

– Danielle Pergament

The Lucayan Archipelago, the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos

Consider – without fear – the shark.