Dominik Lang - The Sleeping City
Czech Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2011
'The Sleeping City' by Dominik Lang was an exploration into appropriation and authorship.
Using his father Jiri Lang (1927-96) sculptures as a medium to reevaluate the role of the artist and curator. Dominik approached the historical context and gestures of art making as a way to explore both his personal relationship with his father as well as various historical consequences of art making.
Jiri Lang created most of his work in secret. In fear of the Communist regime, such a display of creativity could be subject to unwanted attention from the police. Much of the work had never left the Lang household and was mostly un-seen before. Placed together by his son Dominik as a hypothetical exhibition, the works become instrumental in a critique on the dysfunction of now standard exhibition formats. In conflict with its modes of display the sculptures attempt to raise our awareness of the impossibility of presenting historical material in an authentic and coherent way.
