CAN I ?
Opening: Tuesday 25th April 2017 at 6pm
Exhibition dates: 25th April – 27th May 2017
UM Gallery, UMPRUM, Nám. Jana Palacha 80, Prague 1
Opening times: Mon to Sat, 10am – 6pm
Free entry
Nobody can see inside the head of somebody else, whether the person be an artist, aggressor or victim. Yet it’s not uncommon for us to predict or even expect a likely scenario based on a given set of circumstances. Jan Boháč’s exhibition at UM Gallery deals with the way we listen to one another.
Jan Boháč is a distinguished graduate of UMPRUM’s Sculpture Studio led by Dominik Lang and Edith Jeřábková. His exhibition for UM Gallery is based on his own experience as an emergency telephone operator. Every day he responds to urgent cases, but he also has to deal with what appear to be more banal situations. Boháč focuses on our ability to listen when faced with routine matters as well as serious personal tragedies. As an operator he has to decide very quickly how to respond. To what extent can he influence the caller’s desire to go through with what he or she intends? How helpful can he be and is there such a thing as giving the “right response”?
Created especially for UM Gallery, Boháč’s exhibition interrogates the popular truism that “we can’t see inside someone’s head”. He presents an actual conversation he had as an operator with a distressed caller that began with the words, “Hello, please can I jump?” Taking what is, on the face of it, a seemingly absurd question – one that assumes a negative answer – Boháč shows the seriousness of a situation that can never be treated lightly. Instead of preying on the difficult situations faced by others, he also raises questions, doubts and fears about our own deaths and of those closest to us.
Artist: Jan Boháč
Curator: Anežka Bartlová
Graphic design: Jakub Spurný
