SUMMER SCULPTURE PARK
BECHYNĚ CASTLE

BECHYNĚ CASTLE
5 JUNE – 30 SEPTEMBER 2022

Contemporary sculpture from international artists in the Castle Bechyně Park

This year's Sculpture Park at Bechyně Estate, which opened on 5 June and will run until the end of September, features internationally renowned artists in the fields of contemporary sculpture and installation. Most of them are exhibiting in the Czech Republic for the first time, though their work is represented by the world's most important galleries and leading exhibition institutions.

The Stava family is synonymous with tradition and collecting in the field of pre-modern and especially avant-garde art. Nicole Stava co-manages the Bechyně Estate along with her sister, Silvia, and also has years of experience in the international art market. Recently, she has been developing exhibition projects that focus on introducing leading international figures in contemporary art to the Czech Republic.

This year's season at Bechyně Castle is dedicated to prominent positions in the field of contemporary sculpture and other object-oriented artworks. In collaboration with Berlin’s KÖNIG GALERIE, along with art historian and dealer Lucie Drdova, a group of artworks by established artists has been selected from the gallery’s collection. The concept for the current exhibition at the castle park is centred on the work of three of KÖNIG’s most important sculptors: Elmgreen & Dragset, who currently have an ambitious exhibition at the Fondazione Prada in Milan; Mexican artist Bosco Sodi, whose group exhibition of paintings and sculptures is part of the Venice Biennale; and the Austrian conceptualist Erwin Wurm.

ORGANISING INSTITUTIONS AND THEIR REPRESENTATION

Together with her sister Silvia, Nicole Stava runs the family company Bechyne Estate, and has long been involved in the international art market, among other things. For a number of years, she was a senior business development consultant at Christie's auction house in Prague, Vienna, and London. Since 2009, she is the proprietor of Nicole Stava Art Acquisitions and Sales, which provides comprehensive services in the international art trade. She is in charge of the acquisitions of foreign contemporary artists for the Czech investment fund Artefin.

Lucie Drdová is an art historian, dealer, and author. She is currently the curator of the Rony Plesl's exhibition “Trees Grow from the Sky”, which is part of the official programme of Collateral Events at the Venice Biennale. In 2012, she founded the private gallery Lucie Drdova Gallery in Prague, with an active presence in Brussels, representing ten contemporary Czech artists. She is co-founder of the Alliance of Contemporary Art Galleries and participates in the SUMO international gallery cooperation project.

FEATURED ARTISTS

CLAUDIA COMTE

Claudia Comte (b. 1983 in Grancy, Switzerland) is an artist based in the countryside outside of Basel, Switzerland. She studied at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne, ECAL (2004-2007) followed by a Masters of Art in Science of Education at Haute Ecole Pédagogique, Visual Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland (2008-2010).

Comte works between media, often combining sculptures or installations with wall paintings to create environments where works relate to each other with a visual rhythm that is both methodical and playful. Her work is defined by her interest in the memory of materials and by a careful observation of how the hand relates to d...

JEPPE HEIN

Jeppe Hein (b. 1974 in Copenhagen, Denmark) is a Danish artist based in Berlin. He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Städel Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

Jeppe Hein is widely known for his production of experiential and interactive artworks that can be positioned at the junction where art, architecture, and technical inventions intersect. Unique in their formal simplicity and notable for their frequent use of humor, his works engage in a lively dialogue with the traditions of Minimalist sculpture and Conceptual art of the 1970s. Jeppe Hein’s works often feature ...

ALICJA KWADE

Alicja Kwade (b. 1979 in Katowice, Poland) lives and works in Berlin. Her work investigates and questions universally accepted notions of space, time, science, and philosophy by breaking down frames of perception in her work. Kwade’s multifaceted practice spans sculpture, public installation, works on paper, videos, and photography.

Most recently, she has exhibited in the following museums, among others: Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg; Berlinische Galerie – Landesmuseum für Moderne Kunst, Berlin, Germany; Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, USA; Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, USA; Espoo Museum of Mod...

BOSCO SODI

Bosco Sodi (b. 1970 in Mexico City, Mexico) lives and works in New York City, USA and Oaxaca, Mexico. He is known for his richly textured, vividly colored large-scale paintings. Sodi has discovered an emotive power within the essential crudeness of the materials that he uses to execute his paintings. Focusing on material exploration, creative gesture, and the spiritual connection between the artist and his work, Sodi seeks to transcend conceptual barriers. The work itself becomes a memory and a relic, symbolizing the artist’s conversation with the raw material that brought the painting into creation. As he puts it: “Explanations about my w...

ERWIN WURM

Erwin Wurm (b. 1954 in Bruck an der Mur, Austria) lives and works in Vienna. His oeuvre comprises sculptures, photography, video, performance, and painting. His works often involve everyday objects such as cars, houses, clothing, luxury bags, and food products, with which he ironically comments on consumerism and capitalist mass production. Wurm gained widespread popularity in the 1990s with his “One Minute Sculptures”. Museum pedestals are displayed and left devoid of any work, so that the audience can take the place of the sculpture for one minute, according to the artist’s whimsical instructions. With this ironic yet radical gesture, Wu...

DAVID ZINK YI

David Zink Yi (b. 1973 in Lima, Peru) lives and works in Berlin. He explores the body as a site of identity, memory, and transformation, engaging with a wide range of media in the process. From video and sculpture to ceramics, sound, and performance, his art reflects his complex heritage. As a descendant of Indigenous Peruvians, as well as Chinese, Italian, and German immigrants, his own body – situated at the intersection of diverse cultural identities – becomes a focal point in his practice. Zink Yi’s earliest works focused on self-reflection, using the camera to develop a form of self-ethnography. This approach later evolved into a prot...