22. 2. 2017 – 19. 3. 2017

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In the film eXistenZ by the famous Canadian director David Cronenberg the central film couple gets into a strange danger and is no longer able to identify the boundary between reality and virtual reality. In this film from 1999 the virtual reality is not as real as in 2017, when in technological field it will experience one of the biggest changes that we will identify in the next five years.

But you do not even have to put on virtual glasses, just look at the paintings of Mark Nenutil, who is also known by his artistic pseudonym Openmindz360, and you will find yourself among the bizarre coulisses of the contemporary world, in which the difference between real and virtual has virtually been wiped out. On his canvases Marek Nenutil directs his own documentary film that portrays the contemporary civilization, which is exposed to the influence of technology, military conflicts or environmental disasters, and thus creates surreal postmodern playground within his paintings where things are always happening and where you can be fascinated by something at all times.

Dreary atmosphere of the paintings may be caused by the author's disgust over the current state of human civilization, perhaps over his state of health. The individual elements of the paintings are not related at first sight, but even in the greatest complexity they create a vivid whirl, in which you will try to identify the boundary between reality and imagination yourself.

That is the way Marek Nenutil constantly deploys imaginary virtual glasses on you through his paintings without having to actually use this modern tool. Formally, Nenutil's paintings are painted more in depth, they are more plastic and their perspective (which he previously never had in his paintings) works on the first attempt. The exhibition is complemented by the collection of sculptures looking like characters that have fallen out of individual paintings. You can touch them and actually feel them. They are not virtual, they are real. Or have you already become part of one of the paintings yourself?

The Existenz exhibition first took place in December 2016 in the Slezkoostravska gallery in Ostrava and its second part in February 2017 in The Chemistry Gallery in Prague. The summary catalogue is published to accompany both exhibitions.