Routine Ravers

recycled linen with cotton, bent metal, pigmented wax, hand-dyed gauze, recycled hand-dyed textiles in a bentwood frame, sound

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Sound performance: Jan Tomáš, Erik Netušil and Mariana Hradílková
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Audio track: Jan Tomáš
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Photography: Katarzyna Kaleta and Mariorje Brunet Plaza
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All the time that has soaked into the walls. All the memory that was found between the sheets.
Laura Seidel & Kira Dell
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The atmosphere is soft, and so is the floor. Dreamy music drifts through the gallery spaces. Some of us visitors slip off our shoes, drifting away in our thoughts. Sunbeams fall across the floor, a play of light and shadow accompanying the three performers as they each play a different instrument for us, the opening audience. My feet are sweaty and small pieces of the floor installation cling to them. I brush them off quickly and tuck the pieces into my pocket. I take the memory with me.
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All the
time that has soaked
into the walls here.
Time between the little
clicks. Time compared
to the wild fantastic
silence of the stars.
Anne Carson, Time Passes Time
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The exhibition Routine Ravers by the artist duo Barbora Zentková & Julia Gryboś at Galerie Parterre creates an environment that gently welcomes its audience. The floor is covered in recycled fabric made from natural fibers—linen and cotton used in agriculture to protect the soil. Strips of gauze-like textile are pasted on the walls, a material also known for its protective, healing qualities. The name of the delicate fabric likely derives from the Palestinian city of Gaza, once a weaving stronghold. In the face of the current war, it seems impossible to write about the fabric’s place of origin in an apolitical way. The material’s name carries a history of a region now brutally contested, one that speaks of a past time of flourishing. Today we know gauze mainly from medical care. Light yet steadfast, the fabric covers our wounds, shielding us from external forces. Whom do we grant protection as a society? Whose safety touches us? How well do we care for the needs of others? Not enough. Shockingly little.
The fine fabric seems almost like a fleeting gesture. In fact, the artists have, in a laborious feat of strength, covered the walls with the unruly textile. Only with time and attention can it be tamed. Much time. Many hands. That invisible time expands throughout the exhibition space. All the time that has soaked into the walls.
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Routine Ravers.
Rave Time.
Routine Time.
Time Routine?
How time passes in a rave.
Seemingly endless.
Completely irrelevant?
The rave state knows no time,
is occupied with nothing.
The body takes over,
leaves the structures of daily life.
And routine?
Demands precision.
To perform the same task
over and over takes patience,
takes endurance.
The rave is loud. Is routine silent?
They find themselves in rhythm.
Routinized ravers,
ravers of routine
are familiar with
time passing otherwise.
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The gallery is not crowded with objects; the artworks inscribe themselves in it like gentle gestures. This is primarily a space for the audience, not just for the art. On the soft floor, one can linger, sit in the soft folds thrown by the material on the ground, listen to the sounds, follow the light’s dance, and surrender to slowing down. Does time pass differently when everything around us slows down? When we are in a dream-like setting?
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time passes time
does not pass. Time all
but passes. Time usually
passes. Time passing
and gazing. Time has no
gaze. Time as
perseverance. Time as
hunger. Time in a
natural way. Time when
you were six the day a
mountain. Mountain
time.
Anne Carson, Time Passes Time
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The works by Barbora Zentková & Julia Gryboś explore slowness; the way they work is often physically demanding. Can we lose ourselves in routine and, in a results-driven society, once again focus on process rather than outcome? How long can I pursue routine movements before reaching a state akin to a rave? And when does artistic labor become excess?
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Routine Ravers
Where is the routine here?
Who are the ravers?
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The material is the central agent in the duo's work. It demands routine in its handling, but remains a raver itself and retains an obstinacy that requires tireless dedication from the artists in its further processing. Zentková and Gryboś use second-hand materials that already have lived histories. Their use is long gone, but they find a new form in the artists' works. Used bed sheets become wall reliefs. Pieces of textile are pressed together and carefully molded into shape. They are framed like paintings, recalling layers of rock that have formed over millions of years under pressure and heat. Can the weight of the bodies that once lay between these sheets still be felt? Or has it been overwritten by the weight of the artists' bodies, which produce these works in a heavy and slow process? Times and memories pile up one on top of the other—hours of sleep, hours of art-making, hours in the exhibition space. All the time that has soaked into the walls. All the time flowing into the works.
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Things are fluid
if you go the way things are flowing.
If you don’t go that way,
you have to become willful
to keep going.
Sara Ahmed, Willful Subjects
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As a society, we have largely forgotten how to reuse things. Some people still remember it from village life: textiles are used until they are no longer viable. A T-shirt becomes a dishcloth, then a floor mop until it eventually falls apart. In the works of Zentková and Gryboś, used materials find their way into artistic production–a field that rarely pays attention to sustainable cycles. However, the duo finds a new use even for the used wax, melting and integrating it in new installations.
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over and over
melt
flow
dye
pour
harden
form
thread
over and over
melt
flow
dye
pour
harden
form
thread
over and over
all by hand
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The artists produce hundreds of hand-cast and self-pigmented wax beads. Their smooth surface makes them appear almost like polished stone. Swirls of color run through them, and their milky pigmentation evokes minerals such as rose quartz, amethyst, or amazonite. As in the wall reliefs made from bedsheets, the works evoke the materiality of geological layers—those that, over millions of years, have formed the shapes and colors that continue to fascinate us today. All the time that has flowed into these works. Real time. Felt time. Extended time.
Bead by bead, the artists string them together until the snake of beads forms long chains that hang from the ceiling. Like long prayer chains, the beads are stacked one on top of the other. Whether in the Christian rosary or the Hindu and Buddhist mala, each bead stands for a prayer or a mantra. Each bead helps us not to lose our orientation, while at the same time guiding us into a meditative state. Zentková and Gryboś display these long chains of beads on the soft floor, offering a moment to pause. Is it an invitation to explore meditative states of mind ourselves? Or does the meditative state of the artists in their process transfer onto us?
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over and over
melt
flow
dye
pour
harden
form
thread
How fast?
How often?
How long?
over and over
working side by side
melt
flow
dye
pour
harden
form
thread
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How does time pass?
To what rhythm does it adhere?
How many BPM?
What is the rhythm of routine?
Is it only routine
if there is rhythm?
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The artists also reuse their own works in new contexts, yet they always adapt them to the specific site and context. The environment at Galerie Parterre consists of a floor work created especially for the gallery space, as well as a layer of textile covering parts of the wall. At the same time, visitors encounter red steel sculptures with wax drops and the aforementioned wall reliefs, which were recently shown in the Lethargy Blanket exhibition at the Jan Koniarek Gallery in Slovakia. But every instance of reuse is also a reinvention. Materials are loosened, shifted, recontextualized. What remains is the echo of the work, inscribed in layers of fabric, wax, and movement.
At the center lies a practice that does not shape time around efficiency but divides it into rhythms. Repetition is methodical. All gestures—cutting, pressing, melting, pouring—form a beat that transfers: from studio to gallery, from body into space. Visitors, too, become part of this structure. They linger, listen, move to the installation’s rhythm: reuse, rethink, repeat, can you feel the beat? The rave is routine and routine is a rave.