Epos 257
Briefly and generally speaking, the exhibition EPOS 257 in Trafačka consists of a series of found objects and documentary photographs accompanied by author's texts. Objects, photographs and texts connect the environment of the urban wilderness, the interface of nature and civilization. During the course of the exhibition, a book will be added to the exhibited artefacts, offering expanded pictorial and textual material, the basis of which can be found in the gallery. Similarly, the mechanical description says nothing about the process that led to the exhibition and which is essential for the author.
Areas of bankrupt factories, unused corners of railway stations, plots of land where construction has not yet begun, overgrown gardening colonies. The title of the exhibition Roots, branches, branches refers to what we usually find in the places visited by EPOS 257: invasive vegetation flourishes on them. Abandoned buildings and industrial facilities lie somewhere below it, but homeless people also survive in it. If these places resemble wilderness islands, the survival strategies of their temporary inhabitants will resemble the way of life of prehistoric people. Last but not least, many of these locations are connected to the graffiti scene. EPOS 257 does not want to draw attention only to the formal similarity between overgrown bushes and graffiti. He sees a mutual connection in their inner principles.
EPOS 257 repeatedly visits places on the edge and observes their hidden life with an experienced eye. He interprets seemingly uninteresting piles of waste, follows the cycles of nature and urban civilization, documents their transformations and reflects on the rules of their coexistence. This is also why EPOS 257 has been conquering and collecting fences, ladders and other structures overgrown with vegetation for several years. In them we find organic and geometric, natural and industrial in one embrace. The intergrowth is the result of dialogue and mutual negotiation, the results of which the author transfers to the gallery.
However, EPOS 257's own medium is wandering through the urban landscape and experiencing it intensely. The exhibition is not a closed retrospective of the experiences of a deserving graffiti artist, the author conveys his still living stay in a specific and changing environment. From a writer whose instincts he retained, EPOS 257 turned into an observer. In the cacophony of natural and civilizational signs, he can read voices, indistinct and difficult to understand for most of us. The exhibition thus completes the author's development from a spontaneous contribution to urban entropy towards an introspective reflection of the modern world.
EPOS 257 came from the Prague graffiti scene and is also a graduate of the University of Applied Arts. He is dedicated to interventions in public space (Seno, 2009, 50 m2 of public space, 2010, Urban Shoot Paintings, 2009-2011, and others) as well as gallery mediation of similar procedures (for example, in 2017, the exhibition Retroreflexe in the National Gallery in Prague). His work is influenced by an interest in graphic design and architecture, but social themes are also a permanent part of it.
The project EPOS 257 Roots, branches, tendrils turns its attention to the urban wilderness, to corners at the interface between nature and the city, but also to places of social transformation. Objects, photographs and texts are proof of the author's intense relationship with localities on the fringes of public interest and their hidden life.
