The exhibition, Tomorrow will be different, is based on the confrontation of works by Josef Rabara (Zítra bude jinak / Tomorrow will be different, 2015) and Karol Radziszewski (Kisieland, 2012). Both artists work with the topic of local queer history based on the personal stories of Stanislav Z. and Ryszard Kisiel. They indirectly show the role that photography played for both protagonists in the discovery of their sexual identity.
Josef Rabara’s work draws on the personal diary that Stanislav Z. had kept since the mid-1940s. This later client of a Prague-based sex institute openly shares here his desires and also repeatedly describes his frustrating attempts at “therapy” for this homosexual “perversion”. Josef Rabara’s installation consists of audio recording with excerpts from his diary read out loud, a selection of clippings that Stanislav Z. illustrated for his diary and a presentation of self-portraits and erotic-themed photos of men that he took in various situations from daily life. The voyeuristic photographs – that bring to mind somewhat Miroslav Tichy’s “peeping Tom” style – and the reproductions of photographs of athletes demonstrate not only the creativity that the artist applied in obtaining the visual materials (that perhaps stimulated his erotic imagination), but also the possibility of homoerotic rebranding for the meanings of existing photographic artifacts.
