The international exhibition project Anything Goes pt. 2.: Techno ed. is a continuing exploration of current artistic strategies inside Central Europe. The conception targets principles of deformation in form and idea and de(/re)construction with characteristic overlapping of varying visual forms and conceptual sources. For the work of Botond Keresztesi, Nika Kupyrova, Alex Selmeci & Tomáš Kocka Jusko, Céline Struger and Nik Timková, a collage approach is characteristic (not in the sense of the traditional collage medium, but rather using principles of choosing elements from varied contexts and then incorporating them into forms that are new in idea and visual forms), appropriation of strange or found materials, and variability of media.

The exhibition is a free continuation of a curatorial project of the same name, Anything Goes (2019, White & Weiss Gallery, artists: Svetlana Fialová, Pavla Malinová, Nana Mandl, and Titania Seidl), which focused on reconfiguring the essence of painting, drawing and collage. Although sequels rarely anticipate success, the theme of breakdown and the subsequent new putting together of visual and idea forms remains inspiring for further exploratio

The sub-title Techno ed. is a direct response to the context of the current digital world that immediately surrounds us – social networks, blogs, live streams, virtual viewings of expositions, intelligent homes, modern-day influencing, smart phones, artificial intelligence and the technologization of art. The selected artists work in traditional media (painting, object, installation), yet new technologies and echoes of the cold digital space are an integral part of their layered works of ideas. All in one place, there is a natural overlapping of excerpts from popular culture, art history, sci-fi, digitalization, computer games, and personal mythology. Intimate stories are camouflaged in the universal language of contemporary art, and general themes come across as surprisingly personal. High art is a contrast with the targeted use of cheap materials, and the online world blends with the physical.

The Anything Goes pt. 2.: Techno ed. exhibition emphasizes, in addition to related approaches to working, a powerfully dystopian and post-apocalyptic atmosphere stretching throughout the gallery environment. Accelerating feelings of aloneness, anxiety, questions of surviving, environmental sustainability, alternative approaches to life and the future of humanity – all this, in regard to current socio-political occurrences and events in the post-Corona world, is growing markedly stronger. Indeed, it seems that truly anything goes.