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Iron Smirk: Action Art 1976-81
Lumír Hladík
Bunker 2 Contemporary
Mar 15 — Apr 1 2018

When acts of unsanctioned creativity are categorized as treason against the state, every movement, every moment, can become a form of rebellion. Within communist Czechoslovakia artist Lumír Hladík was an integral catalyst for ‘action art,’ a term used to denote public and private performance work. These happenings ranged from the critical to the absurd, but all represented a type of artistic freedom that was suppressed under communist censorship.
Lumír Hladík is a pioneering figure of Action Art, an Eastern European conceptual and performance art movement. Fascinated by its immediacy and formal freedom, he engaged in action art, installations and interventions, documenting his art in photography and 8mm film. His early work explored notions of alterity and determinism. After moving to Canada in 1982, the artist spent over three decades studying natural entropy in the Canadian wilderness. 





Still from "The Never Boulder," Hill Klepec near Úvaly, Czech Republic, 1978.