Still in the Game: An Exhibition of the EXIT Award Winners

The EXIT Award is a competition for students of Czech and Slovak art academies created by the Faculty of Art and Design, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. It is biennial, its first edition took place in 2003 and since 2013 it has been open to students of Slovak art academies as well. The main ambition of the EXIT Award is to contribute to developing an active and communicative environment at and among academies, to motivate students to carry out their own art projects in professional exhibition venues (until now the Emil Filla Gallery). This creates a continuous living platform informing about current tendencies, teaching activities and priorities at Czech and Slovak art academies.

Due to the special nature of the pandemic period, the organizers have decided to take the year 2021 as an opportunity to evaluate the results so far and open a discussion about current and future visions, and the character and optimal form of competitions in the art world. A joint exhibition of all nine (or ten, respectively) hitherto winners of the EXIT Award presenting their current work will be an ideal springboard for such an evaluation. The exhibition Still in the Game, which will take place at the end of 2021 in the House of the Lords of Kunštát in Brno, will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue. In addition to a retrospective section devoted to previous editions of the Award, there will be space for Czech and Slovak theoreticians and curators to reflect on the possibilities and limits of art competitions.

photo: Michaela Dvořáková