Ján Mančuška – Absent

The book Absence presents a complete overview of the art projects completed from 2003-2007 of Ján Mančuška (1971-2011), one of the most successful Czech artists of his generation. Since Mančuška, winner of the 2024 Jindřich Chalupecký prize, carried out these works in large exhibitions of contemporary art primarily outside the Czech Republic (Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Berlin Biennial, Basle Art Fair, Czechoslovak pavilion at the Venice Biennial) the book is an important source of information for Czech readers on the development of his work.

Absence is an artist’s book; it is not a dry document but rather plays with the function of a book itself. It is divided into two sections. The first, the textual section, arose in cooperation with theorist Vít Havránek, and in several essays the authors define the basic concepts and principles of Mančuška’s thought. The second part of the book maps Mančuška’s work through a series of photographs of installations, sketches, texts, and descriptions. The works of Ján Mančuška were of the nature of specific investigations. In them the artist dealt primarily with ways of telling stories, with different speeds of time, or attempted to work with the perception of the viewer in the exhibition space.

Through three-dimensional objects, installations, performances, videos and film, Mančuška created authentic thought models and maps of every day experience. He had often worked with text – language, which was isolated into the form of grandiose time-space installations. He was fascinated with plurality, simultaneity, non-linearity and fragmentation.