We Have Never Been Forest

Tomáš Hrůza and Markus Guschelbauer's exhibition We Have Never Been Forest is a follow-up to the 2019 exhibition and book We Have Never Been Earth by Tomáš Hrůza and Andrea Průchová Hrůzová. We've never been modern - because modernity is a construct invented by humans, just like all the other categories that we have thought for centuries we correctly know our surroundings through. We divided the world into "nature" and "culture" and hoped that separating the human and the non-human would help us better understand and describe the world. But something else happened - the world began to fall apart. We were never the earth, we were never the forest - because we were never "just" human as understood by our Enlightenment-modernist-capitalist tradition. Tomáš Hrůza and Markus Guschelbauer at the House of the Lords of Kunštát are essentially "bringing wood to the gallery". Through this slightly absurd and ultimately nonsensical move, they refer to the interconnectedness of all living and non-living things, with an emphasis on the themes that have long appeared in both artists' work: trees and forest. But what is still a forest and what is no longer? There is no place in our landscape that is not at least a little bit influenced by man: the overgrown bark beetle and the dead trees in the streets refer directly to our activity. How can we take a step back and try to be more of a forest, while at the same time letting it live without our interference so that it stops being so human? Through "forest in the gallery" the artists look back at what is happening to our world and what paths we might take in the future. Although both originally photographers, they also step out of this box and into the space, guiding visitors through their imaginative, dadaist and slightly psychedelic musings.

photo: Markus Guschelbauer