Always Over Titled Dreamers Safari

A visual representation of the Western world in midlife crisis.

“In the heart of the savanna, where the sun kisses the earth with a golden warmth and the wind whispers tales of distant lands, there exists a safari unlike any other. It's not just a journey through the wilderness; it's a voyage into the realms of imagination, where dreamers roam free and adventure knows no bounds.

On this safari, the travelers are not mere tourists but explorers of the mind, seekers of hidden treasures within the vast expanse of their own thoughts. They come from all walks of life, driven by a common desire to escape the mundane and embrace the extraordinary.

The guides, seasoned veterans of the imagination, lead the way with a twinkle in their eyes and a map drawn from the stars. They know every trail, every secret watering hole where dreams come to quench their thirst for life.

As the safari progresses, the landscapes morph and shift, mirroring the ever-changing desires of the dreamers. One moment, they find themselves soaring through the clouds on the back of a majestic MiG-29 eagle, the next they're diving into the depths of the ocean, surrounded by a kaleidoscope of marine life like the Red Sea Rebels.

But amidst the excitement and wonder, there are walls, obstacles and challenges that need to be overcome or reconstructed.

And that's why guides keep going, always Over Titled, in pursuit of the impossible. For on this safari the only limits are those imposed by the imagination itself. And in the end, not travelers will emerge from it, but architects of dreams, ready to conquer new frontiers of possibility.“ - Generated from the exhibition title

Julius Reichel (*1981) was born in Kaplice, Czechia, and he lives and works in Prague. After being expelled from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, he joined and graduated from the UMPRUM studio of Intermedia Confrontation under Jiří David. Ironically, in 2023 he returned to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague as a professor. Reichel is an intermedia artist who deals with object creation and painting in a specific way. In his understanding, the canvas is not a defined and enclosed surface but rather a starting point or foundation for developing the potential of this medium.

Reichel moves within the physical boundaries of the painter's canvas with overlaps both mental and technological – he layers multiple perspectives and linear thought processes within one artwork. The resulting image blends a multitude of information translated into visual form from various spheres of the author's perception of reality and received stimuli. A certain schematism that unites Reichel's works becomes a clearly readable authorial handwriting, although decrypting its contents is often an impossible goal.

Dutchman Roel Jeroen van der Linden (*1982) is a painter who has lived in the Czech Republic for a long time. However, his family's centuries-old roots are in what was then colonial Indonesia. How did Roel get to us? He first studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam, and then, certainly to his benefit, he continued his studies in Prague in the painting studio of Jiří Černický (and his assistant Marek Meduna) on the UMPRUM. Here, there was a natural acquaintance and connection with painters from this (David Krňanský, Martin Lukáč) and the neighboring studio of David (Roman Výborný, Julius Reichel). If the common denominator of these colleagues is movement in abstract or abstracted painting creations, when they do not hide even from the absorption of the social context and interventions in the space of galleries and outside them, Roel is a different and, in his own way, more complex author.