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Studio of Jirí Lang (Jirí and Dominik Lang), Photo, 1988, courtesy of the artist, Dominik Lang photo archive
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Studio of Jirí Lang (Dominik Lang), Photo, 2011, courtesy of the artist, photo by Jirí Thýn
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Dominik Lang, Fragment 12 from the project Sleeping City, 2011, photography collage on paper, courtesy of the artist
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Dominik Lang, Fragment 3 from the project Sleeping City, 2011, photography collage on paper, courtesy of the artist
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Dominik Lang, Fragment 8 from the project Sleeping City, 2011, photography collage on paper, courtesy of the artist
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Dominik Lang, Fragment 11 from the project Sleeping City, 2011, photography collage on paper, courtesy of the artist
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Dominik Lang, Fragment 12 from the project Sleeping City, 2011, photography collage on paper, courtesy of the artist
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Dominik Lang, Fragment 6 from the project Sleeping City, 2011, photography collage on paper, courtesy of the artist
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Dominik Lang, Fragment 9 from the project Sleeping City, 2011, photography collage on paper, courtesy of the artist
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Dominik Lang, Fragment 7 from the project Sleeping City, 2011, photography collage on paper, courtesy of the artist
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Dominik Lang, Fragment 5 from the project Sleeping City, 2011, photography collage on paper, courtesy of the artist
Dominik Lang’s exhibition project is a “quote“ in a text written by history; the testimonial of a man stuck between the cogwheels of totalitarian predetermination; the fictitious cross-generational dialogue of two artists tied by a personal relationship /father and son/. It poses a number of questions regarding one’s view of one’s own past, the selected method of its reading, the possibilities and limits of its re-construction and the related problem of regressive identification and sorting. Lang’s site-specific installation is a visualized reflection of a period in Czech history read through the prism of personal experience. The artist creates a hypothetic model of an exhibition where complicated configurations of objects, artifacts and structural elements are emancipated and combined into a network of interrelated coordinate positions. The arising groupings – sediments of individual memory – form a complex “collage“, a view of the past profiled by the present. Creating a multi-layered sandwich of meanings, the artist is aware of the fact that the meaning can never be fixed (Luhmann 1995). In his artistic work thus far, D. Lang has typically presented himself in the double role of author and architect, a role that includes manipulating already-finished material and composing new wholes out of it. In the Sleeping City project, D. Lang pushes this basic pattern towards greater complexity, a larger scope as well as a radical strengthening of personal and emotional engagement. As the author says: “The Sleeping City is a visualised meditation on the manner of how we create our own personal history by taking over and yet modifying the established ways of perceiving and assessing the past. “ By means of assorted objects, artistic works and assembled documents, D. Lang allows us to both enter the past and to uncover the volatile intimacy of moments opening “beyond time“.
Yvona Ferencová
An interview with Dominik Lang by Tomaš Pospiszyl
Cutting up the sculptures is a kind of commentary.pdf
Dominik Lang
Dominik Lang
Moving walls, 2006
Courtesy of the Artist
Photo by Ondřej Polák
Dominik Lang
Wardrobe, 2008
Courtesy of the Artist
Dominik Lang
Gallery space in the mirror, 2008
Courtesy of the Artist
Dominik Lang
Yelow stain, 2005
Documentation of the work (photograph)
Courtesy of the Artist
Lang work mainly deals with explorations of the public space, reactions on concrete situations and perception of the contemporary sculpture in general. Artist not makes remarkable, individual projects which would show their originality, there is more of the consistent attitude and working method in it. He is focused on revealing the solutions. His objects and installations are usually formally very precise, made out of everyday materials, they move on the border between art and design and craft. Dominik Lang work can be summarized as a program: Important connecting link and repeating theme in his works is the idea of wasting time, space and effort in the process of making. Many of artist installations and interventions are results of a time-consuming and hardworking process, the installation very often serves as a proof or result of the action. The final appearance of the objects is usually very minimal, sometimes maybe even invisible. He is interested in how things are made and for which purpose they constitute a means, Lang is concerned in a play with different materials and their physical and optical quality, stability, divisions of space which unable fluent movement, subtle modifications of objects, changes of scale, newly defined functions and characteristics of things, taking already made objects out of their natural contexts and using them for other purpose, so that they are loosing their previous function and meaning. The projects vary from removing selected sections, interrupting the stability of an apparently homogenous space, infirming the viewer and playing with his/her reaction (which i also take as one of the results of his work) The place of actions is usually and logically his nearest neighborhood-school, home, public space. The content of the work is strictly given by its context. One of the outputs of the work is a level of the personal experience. The installations rise from the idea of some concrete space or situation-interior of a gallery or reaction on a concrete stereotype. Some of them are very temporal, they serve to raise questions about our conventional system, the social categories such as private and public can be rethought. He focuses on relationship between object and space, object and the viewer etc. Influenced by minimalism, design, architecture, readymade, the aesthetic of cheap material, artist conduct his ironic game with apparently stable concepts such as big and small, banal and sublime, true and false.