Fotograf Magazine

Congratulations. A baby fruit is born. Vendula Knopová (*1987) finished her studies in photography at the School of Multimedia Communication at the university in Zlín. Last year she won the grand prize in the Frame competition. In her new collection, Jdou dva, prostřední spadne / Two Are Walking, the Middle One Falls, that she showed in the Fait Gallery in Brno, she strains the aesthetic of humour to the brink of embarrassment. It takes us back to things that we most certainly once laughed at, but which adulthood wiped away. The exhibition enacts situational humour, makes it present – sometimes in an image, sometimes through text (as in the legendary magazine, Dikobraz / Porcupine). For that matter, the desire to act frivolous at all cost, the need to cast off her serious efforts, has likely been characteristic of Vendula for a long time. It would seem that the internet is full of such image “derisions” and so why take tea to China. Personally I am drawn to these images because of the suspected layers below the photographs’ surface. I imagine Vendula as she uncovers memories of childhood games, as she hunts in the parallel world of her younger sisters, how she carries out the archaeological dig of her childhood with a straight face in order to dig up the unserious. She rediscovers a world of strange commands or just proclamations from the world of adults; from which children’s brains become just risible examples, devoid of any logic. Vendula’s photographs illustrate this bizarreness; the childhood search for various constructions for   how to relate to the world around them and to social conventions.