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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by Johana Posova. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by Johana Posova. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by Johana Posova. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by Johana Posova. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by Johana Posova. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by Johana Posova. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by Johana Posova. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by Johana Posova. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by Johana Posova. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by India Ray. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by India Ray. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by India Ray. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.
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Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, 'Retrospective', (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by India Ray. Courtesy the artist, Are Events + National Gallery, Prague.

In Memory of Now: 23-year-old Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva’s Retrospective performance cites a new kind of history

, 6 February 2017

Prague-based artist Lukáš Hofmann (aka Saliva, not to be confused with Liège producer ssaliva) presented a performance called Retrospective at Prague’s National Gallery on December 3, 2016.

Lukáš Hofmann / Saliva, ‘Retrospective’, (2016). Performance documentation. Photo by Johana Posova. Courtesy the artist + National Gallery, Prague.

The performance was organized by Are  and was part of exhibition Against Nature (2016) curated by Edith Jerabkova and Chris Sharp, devoted to exploring the young Czech art scene. The performance was prepared in collaboration with Anne Sofie Madsen who made the clothes worn by participants, which included models who’ve walked for Vetements and Hood By Air, like Coco Kate, Eva Che, Roman Ole, and Katrice Dustin, among others.

An accompanying text by london-based writer Ari Nielsson was published alongside the performance, where he documents the way bodies “began to shift out of their carefully poised stoicisms. Amid the space’s arrangement of sculptures, whose forms wavered between the instability of the organic and some semi-industrial quality, their bodies jolted and broke from reciprocal and sympathetic objecthood.”

The press release places the show within “a new type of history is emerging: a history that looks back only as far as Now.” The young, 23-year old Hofmann decided to organize a ‘retrospective’ in memory of bee-stung flesh, underground car packs and other signs of nature that remind him “he will never be a 13-year-old Ukrainian girl model crying to her mother from Paris via Skype, again.”**

Lukáš Hofmann (aka Saliva)’s Retrospective performance was on at Prague’s National Gallery, December 3, 2016.