CGD

Daniela and Linda Dostáleks are not only sisters but also form a well-coordinated duo. Linda graduated from the fields of stage design in Brno and typography in Arnhem, Daniela studied photography and new media in Ústí nad Labem and Warsaw. They jointly run the para-agency named Institutional Homeopathy and cooperate with the Ostrava PLATO kunsthalle as curators.

Their author's book, Hysteric Glamour, introduced in the framework of an exhibition held in the Prague Fotograf Gallery, originated in cooperation with the London graphic studio OK-RM. Instead of a traditional book, it is a luxurious visual artifact simultaneously presenting two series of photographs printed on hard cardboard. One captures the encounters among black electric kettles and/or rice cookers (probably PHILIPS HD3011) taking place on a big black stone of "kubrickial" looks. In the other series, the contortionist Klára Kubíková, clad in elegantly scorched apparel, tries to find an ideal position in the leather interior of a BMW car. Although both series follow the style of studio product photography, they radically disturb its intrinsic motivations. Instead of evoking flawless function and seductive design, they incite something between inappropriateness, loneliness and painful fatigue, and the incomprehensible stickiness of their visual morphology helps further peel off more and more of layers.

The duo's work for the CS edition of Vogue can be viewed as a complementary counterpoint of the above-mentioned: instead of a criticism, it is a subtle and smart subversion, which is at the same time, in the words of the artists, "mainly an alternative source of financing works of art". After all, the Lipstick Shape Personality series develops on their earlier photography series, while the Circulation editorial energetically introduces the elements of the contemporary post-internet aesthetics to Czech fashion photography.

Pavel Vančát