Double Fantasy: An Exhibition Bridging 17th-Century Painting and Contemporary Digital Photography at Rudolfinum Gallery

Double Fantasy explores the dialogue between 17th-century European landscape painting doctrines and their reinterpretation in contemporary digital photography. The exhibition features artists who use traditional academic principles to construct ideal landscapes through modern photographic techniques.

The exhibition 'Double Fantasy' is conceptualized around the resonant relationship between the academic doctrine of European landscape painting, particularly from the 17th century, and its re-application in contemporary digital photography. Artists such as Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin are referenced as precursors to an approach where historical, academic landscapes were consciously crafted outside of time and space, aiming for an idealized reality based on doctrine rather than direct observation. The work of Beate Gütschow exemplifies this by treating landscape as an image construction, using classical analog photography to create a reservoir of traditional motifs, which are then digitized and assembled into large-format ideal landscapes according to academic principles. The exhibition also delves into the contemporary issue of nature's authenticity and human intervention, particularly relevant in European landscapes. Jan Jedlička confronts the ideal landscape with current reality through his photographs of seemingly untouched yet fundamentally transformed terrains. His work, characterized by stark, flat compositions and wide-angle lenses that emphasize depth and the passage of time, focuses on the essence of natural forms. Michal Šeba, conversely, maximizes new digital photography technology to heighten the reality of the landscape, employing compositions that, while often cropped segments of reality, evoke magical situations through their lighting and atmosphere. His technological approach, capturing full detail and sharpness across all distances, pushes the boundaries of photographic representation. Petr Nedoma's film 'Krajina (Montalcino), 2010' concludes the exhibition by posing urgent questions about the origin of archetypal landscape ideas—whether they stem from nature itself or from a culturally inherited, museum-tradition idea of it—and the influence of education on our perception and shaping of landscapes.

Visitor entry information is not explicitly detailed for this past exhibition. The general museum policy states that the last entry is 30 minutes before closing, and visitors can re-enter if they did not have enough time. Admission is voluntary, suggesting it may be free or donation-based, but this is not confirmed for this specific exhibition. The address provided is Alšovo nábřeží 12, 110 00 Praha 1.