LONDON.- The Czech Centre London reopened its art gallery with an impressive group exhibition of contemporary Czech photography showcasing a broad spectrum of human vulnerabilities and desires through the lenses of twelve photographers of the middle and young generations. Ranging from topics of motherhood, inclusivity and nature to pollution, consumerism and wounds to the body and soul, the exhibition discloses the one thing we have in common - the need for tenderness.

Initially created by curator Michal Nanoru for New York audience, where the show was well received in autumn 2019, the London edition has been given a major remake to reflect the changes the world has gone through over the last two years and to offer a fresh perspective.

The exhibition curator Michal Nanoru on Tender in London: ‘’Two years have passed since the original Tender exhibition in New York and since then my motivations to put on this show have only grown deeper. Long months of isolation and anxiety during the pandemic, the reality of Brexit and pressing climate changes, the Capitol attack and the long-overlooked topic of mental health – these are but a few themes of the recent years that have made the bruise of ‘Tender’ even darker, more swollen, more painful.’




The exhibition presents a deliberately wide range of photographic strategies – from snap-shot like images that have appeared in the context of fashion editorials to post conceptual works by artists skeptical of the very photographic medium – all by the way of talking about tenderness or the need for it. It charts intense personal relationships and registers vulnerabilities of people and their environments – known in the words of Kurt Cobain’s lyrics as ‘the bruises on the fruit’. The title was chosen for the exhibition by curator Michal Nanoru, drawing inspiration from Allen Ginsberg’s famous plea to then-Senator Robert F. Kennedy some time in late 1960s:

‘’What this country needs, if anything, is tenderness. Tenderness is the key to the solution of the ecological problem, as well as all the other human problems. Tenderness to mother nature, tenderness to our fellow man, including tenderness to fairies and junkies, is what at this point is desired by the entire younger generation’’.

Tender in London features work by New York based photographer Marie Tomanová best known for her raw, intimate portraits of the American youth; and Václav Jirásek who has been using his work to ridicule the dark side of consumerist society for over fifteen years. New photographs can be expected from the Royal College of Art alumna Tereza Zelenková who is inspired by old myths and superstitions as well as artist Radek Brousil whose project responds to the advertising myth of natural water sold as a source of life in plastic bottles and the dark side of the fashion industry. London and Prague based fashion photographer Hana Knížová presents a new photo in addition to those previously seen in New York, offering a compassionate insight into motherhood as well as life of teenagers institutionalized in a detention facility. Dušan Tománek maps the tender spots of Central European history by photographing the razed inhabitations of the Sudeten Germans (expelled after the Second World War) often encroached by overgrown trees, parallel to Jiří Thýn’s documentation of a forgotten Prague nursery slowly disappearing under the comforting blanket of nature. Valentýna Janů, one of the younger artists in the show, directs her camera to our home office desk decorated with a cut flower – a dead organism and at the same time the ultimate symbol of affection, now inconspicuously erasing the boundaries between the public and the private. Other artists representing the young generation include Denis Baštuga and Iryna Drahun who contaminate original natural enviroments with digital 3D shapes asking: do we protect nature, or does nature protect us?‘. Baštuga’s theme of digital erosion further mirrors in a joint project with Lena Luga – their Magic Garden, a proposed „oasis of calm, sin and hedonism“ pushes us to re-evaluate today’s preconceptions of beauty and taste. Centre to the exhibition remain the erotically charged photographs by the ‘2014 Czech Photographer of the Year’ Adam Holý, who died in 2016 aged forty-two.

Over half a century later, it seems that Ginsberg’s words now resonate more than ever before. The artists showcased in this exhibition have been listening.

“I have no doubt that this evoking photographic exhibition of Czech contemporary photography represented by twelve talented, disruptive as well as poetic photographers will be a fine addition to the newly awakening post-pandemic cultural London scene.” Přemysl Pela, Czech Centre London Director