The Telegraph Journal reports not only on events at the Telegraph itself, but also on projects that are linked to it more broadly. Telegraph Gallery's chief curator Mira Macík, in collaboration with curator Terezia Zemánková, has prepared a project entitled Sleep of Reason for Prague's Spot Gallery. This collaboration naturally emerged during the preparations for the exhibition Connection, which you could see at the Telegraph Gallery at the turn of 2023 and 2024. It is from this project that Jan Hísek is now featured in the current exhibition. Other artists are also associated with the Telegraph building. Jan Durina exhibited here in November in a pop-up exhibition at the Telegraph Lofts. Dominik Adamec is in residence here in 2022.
The exhibition's title refers to Francisco Goya's The Sleep of Reason Breeds Monsters prints from his famous Caprichos - Whimsy series (1793-1799). Goya's etching captures the moment when the wakefulness of reason gives way to sleep and mental space is usurped by nightmares and terrifying imagery. It is this moment, when the boundaries of rationality break down and the dark contents of the unconscious take over, that becomes the starting point of a project in which contemporary authors explore the various phases of oneiric states, intimate rituals and hidden mental spaces, in which the positivist approach encounters magical, archetypal images of the collective unconscious. At a time when rationality is failing as a tool to comprehensively understand reality, a return to intuition, imagination and dream structures seems an alternative way to navigate a world that has lost both legibility and stability.
The exhibitors are Jolana Škachová, Dana Sahánková, Jan Hísek, Jan Durina, Dominik Adamec, Dominik Styk, Karel Havlíček
