HESSE FLATOW is pleased to announce the opening of Conductive Fields, an exhibition of sculptural works by the Brooklyn-based artist duo Kristyna and Marek Milde, marking their first solo-presentation with the gallery.
Kristyna and Marek Milde’s cross-disciplinary practice spanning sculpture, photography, and installation mines an ever-evolving, anthropocentric landscape, its systems of power and communication in relationship to the natural world that may affect one’s connection to a place. Across its myriad manifestations, from the geographic to the architectural, the home lies at the center of their inquiry, providing a tangible framework where social, economic, and ecological issues collide in the context of the everyday. Exploring contemporary issues of displacement, isolation, and passive consumerism, their projects foreground hidden or overlooked interdependencies between nature and urbanization, further complicating their seemingly contradictory stance.
Conductive Fields brings together two bodies of work that underscore the transference of energy lines between natural springs and the built environment.
Engaging with the gallery’s architecture is In-Tree-Net (2011-2023), a site-specific installation consisting of a tree whose stems snake in from below the concrete floor, turning sharply at a 90-degree angle, before fanning its branches at the room’s edge. Resembling plumbing and electrical infrastructures normally concealed behind walls, the work blurs boundaries between indoors and outdoors, creating a visual go-between.
Alongside this interior occupation of the organic hangs a never-before-shown body of work providing a window out into the exterior. Based on photographs of power lines entangled by tree branches encountered on city walks, Motherboards (2023)feature interlacing line patterns that are etched onto green circuit boards with gold inlay. In creating continuities between disparate energy forces into an integrated wiring system, Kristyna and Marek remind their audience of their joint primary sources – namely the sun, water, and air.
Kristyna and Marek Milde are a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist duo, originally from Prague, Czech Republic. They have exhibited internationally in institutions such as the Queens Museum, MoMA, Smack Mellon, Wave Hill, MOCA Westport, the DOX Center for Contemporary Art, Futura, and Meet Factory, Prague, Dum Umeni Usti nad Labem, among others. They have been awarded numerous prestigious residencies such as the Art Omi Residency, ISCP, Queens Museum Studio in the Park Residency, LMCC Process Space Residency at Governors Island, NYC, EFA Shift Residency, Andrea Zittel A – Z West Residency, California, and the Russell Wright Design Center Residency, Garrison, NY. The Mildes have won the Westport Art Center competition with their Homescape Tete-a-Tete design. Their work has been featured and reviewed in the New York Times, Brooklyn Rail, Flashart, Hyperallergic, Artribune, ArtClue, Artycok TV, Czech National Television, and Radio among others. Kristyna Milde studied painting at the Assenza Malschule in Basel, Switzerland. Marek Milde studied Sculpture at Atelier Dodekaeder in Germany. They received MFAs from Queens College, New York in 2007. Marek Milde currently works at the Czech Center NY, and both have worked at the Czech Cultural Institute in Manhattan, where they curated and organized a wide range of events, festivals, exhibitions, residencies, and international programs. The Mildes are currently preparing for their first museum solo exhibition at the Kunsthalle Praha, Prague which is scheduled to open in Spring 2024.
