Thomas Grauman: Confrontations

The exhibition Thomas Grauman: Confrontations presents the unofficial art events of the same name that took place in May 1984 in Jiří David's studio in Prague's Smíchov district. These spontaneous events organized by students of the Academy of Fine Arts and the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design were a response to the impossibility of participating in the official art scene and represented an effort to freely share creative work and confront opinions outside the institutional and ideological frameworks of the time. They became an expression of the generational need to find space for independent artistic dialogue and at the same time became part of a broader underground of unofficial activities that defined the truly vibrant scene of the 1980s.

The exhibition presents photographs by American artist Thomas Grauman, taken during his short visit to Prague. They are not merely a documentation of the exhibited works, but a sensitive visual record of an event that itself acted as a performative gesture—a meeting of people, creations, and shared presence. Grauman captured an atmosphere of closeness that transcended political boundaries, a moment when the boundary between author and viewer disappeared in favor of a shared experience of freedom.

The curatorial selection presents Grauman's photographs in dialogue with the original works of the participants in the original Confrontations. This context expands the narrative of the photographic series and transforms it into a visual reconstruction of an event that took place more than forty years ago without official documentation. The rediscovery of Grauman's archive today opens up the possibility of a new reading of the Konfrotance phenomenon—as an extraordinary expression of cultural resistance and the need to create in times of restriction. The exhibition thus offers a picture of a time when free expression was not a given and when shared creative space represented one of the few forms of authentic freedom.