Transcript for Episode 20 – Conceptual Artist, Alena Foustková (Prague, CZ)

Published September 26, 2019

Full recording here: https://wisefoolpod.com/contemporary-fine-art-podcast-with-conceptual-artist-alena-foustkova-prague-cz/

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Matthew Dols 0:12
Please pronounce your name correctly for me, I’ll enough first cover. And where are you from?

Alena Foustková 0:18
Originally check. However, I lived in Canada for 11 years. And so I got also a Canadian citizenship. So now I have checked on Canadian passport.

Matthew Dols 0:30
Nice. And you live in Prague now,

Alena Foustková 0:33
I actually live outside of Prague. It’s called channel sheets. And it’s a short distance about maybe 16 kilometers, I believe out of Brock.

Matthew Dols 0:44
One of the things I’m always fascinated with when I talk to anybody who’s worked in the arts is how did they get made basically? So like with nature versus nurture, like, was it natural? Were your parents creative? Or was influenced by a teacher or lover? or How did you end up on the path to get you to the point of being an artist So? So start with like, siblings, parents, what did they do? How did they potentially either influence are not influenced you?

Alena Foustková 1:14
My whole family? Mostly are pharmacists, my parents, my sister, my father, his brother was a pharmacist, his both children were pharmacists, my grandfather was a pharmacist. Okay, so

Matthew Dols 1:29
I have a family tradition, quite

Alena Foustková 1:30
a tradition. Exactly. You know, so I kind of fall out of it or out of this pattern. However, on my mother’s side, I will say that probably if there was any gene that I could get, you know, to actually develop my creativity. Her family, last name was her surname was Molina from, you know, one of her side of her background. And my uncle was named was also Molina. Frank Molina was a pioneer of kinetic art.

Matthew Dols 2:14
I was gonna say this name sounds familiar to me.

Alena Foustková 2:17
Right? Yeah, he actually, he was born in the states already, because part of the family moved to the states and and then settled there. And then his brother moved to southern part of, of the continent to Brazil. So one brother state in the United States in Texas, and his brother went all the way down to Brazil. And he had four children there. One of them was my grandmother. And he eventually moved back, you know, to his homeland, to Czechoslovakia at the time. And the other brother stayed in the states and had children. And one of the children was this Frank Molina, who was a astronomer at first because he studied at Berkeley, and was in the team of people who are of astrophysicist, I think, I guess that would be a better expression for this. Who created the first rocket first space rocket for NASA?

Matthew Dols 3:29
Wow. Okay, so this is this 50s and 60s,

Alena Foustková 3:32
it was Yeah, before the 50s before, because after the 50s, he moved to Europe, he lived in France for some time. And he started to paint and he devoted all his time to art. And he felt like, he missed so much time in the science, that he should have been in the arts, you know, much earlier. And he actually combined the science, you know, and the knowledge of the mechanics and of the universe with pieces that he created later, that work kind of based on on the inspiration of the universe, you know, with these planetary systems, and that one of them, actually, I have home, it’s in the box down here at the moment, but I put my jacket on. Exactly. And it’s called Nebula, so he also gave it special titles, you know, related to the space. And so I think that was probably the closest to the creative genes that I like to claim, you know, that I’m part of, you know, that family. And there was also another relative who lived in the country who was an artist in the region of Allah kiya, which is in Moravia. His Son, one of his two sons of this Frank Molina, his name is Roger Molina. He also followed in the father’s footsteps, as The astrophysicist also studied at Berkeley. And they originated an a magazine called Leonardo, which they still publish in California. And it combines science with art. And also, usually, artists who use science somehow to make their art would be the typical participants in the magazine.

Matthew Dols 5:28
I totally understand. Yeah, went to school with a number of people that do that kind of work. Okay, now then. So that’s your family and your family history. So then did you go to schooling? Did you get any sort of proper iQ? Was this word proper training? Did you get any sort of formal training in the arts?

Alena Foustková 5:46
I did, I studied the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague at the end of 1970s, and beginning of 1980s. And my studio, that I kind of took for five years of my study was printmaking. So it was really in the techniques, you know, of the traditional kind of printing, I was gonna

Matthew Dols 6:14
say, be more specific, what’s, what’s your specialty? What’s your favorite?

Alena Foustková 6:17
Well, I don’t do it anymore. You know, I don’t have any printing press at home.

Matthew Dols 6:23
Why not?

Alena Foustková 6:24
It’s just too technical, very time consuming, I would say in something that is more about the craft and the skill. And I don’t, I don’t feel that I have the need to express You know, my ideas through that skill so much anymore. Even though I still like, you know, if I have a chance, I would make a print of some sort. Probably no, Liam cut would be the, you know, easiest to make, how because I can do it at home. But I would do all the you know, etchings and aquatints. And lithographs in and all the techniques basically love them all. They’re so beautiful. Yeah, they are beautiful. It’s kind of noble way of producing, right, these things, and you really have to know how to do it.

Matthew Dols 7:18
It’s a little bit of chemistry. It’s a little bit of our Yes, it’s definitely got a there’s a certain element of science, definitely in good printmaking. So you graduated from OSU for doing printmaking, you say that you sort of have now moved on in your career sort of got beyond printmaking? What, what, what brought you to the point of doing that, like, I’m personally at a transitional point in my artistic career where I started off as a photographer, and did that for many decades, even at this point. And recently, in the past few years have transitioned away from photographic works into more constructed painting, collage, multimedia stuff. And so that’s what I’m really interested in sort of, why do we seem to almost sort of, like, get bored with or is it that we got that word with or that we like, just feel like we’ve done everything we can do in it? And now we want to do add some other layer to it. Why? Why are we feeling this restlessness to change mediums and do something else?

Alena Foustková 8:22
I think in my case, it was not that I would get bored, it was more my course of my life that actually took me to Canada. And it was not so easy anymore, you know, to pursue printmaking there.

Matthew Dols 8:36
What was the thing that brought you to Canada?

Alena Foustková 8:39
We emigrated there with my husband, or I did that in in the time or during the time of communism? That was in 1984. During the summer of that year, and we could not see that the system could you know, wear out and collage every

Matthew Dols 8:57
five years short. Have you stuck it out for five more years? Right?

Alena Foustková 9:01
Yeah, but we were at the age, you know, we I was 27 My husband was like, short of 29 I think it was still 28 we were quite young, we wanted to explore the world. And mainly, we did not want to have children in that in that system. You know, that was so rigid, not really letting you express freely, especially, you know, in in our profession or in my profession. When you felt so constrained. You know, you could not really express your thoughts, which is an interesting thing.

Matthew Dols 9:38
I’ve been reading about I’ve been and learning the history of the Czech Republic now that I live here. And one thing that I i’ve never lived under that kind of pressure, right, per se. I mean, I did a little bit when I lived in the United Arab Emirates. I had to sort of fit with Sharia law and things like this, but but never to the extent To which you’re talking

Alena Foustková 10:01
to, like, the sub police how it was crazy, you know, like we did not maybe realize when we lived in that system, how that we live our young lives, you know, as anybody else. But of course, we were very limited. We could not enjoy life as anybody you know, like, that’s

Matthew Dols 10:25
your word, whether it’s a good My point is, did you know you were limited? Of

Alena Foustková 10:29
course, yeah, we knew that, yeah, we will live double lives, we knew from our families, you know that we could not say things in the public, we could not even trust our closest friends to say things, because they could be agents of the, you know, secret police. And that happened often, you know, that friends that you thought were really close to you would denounce you to the police, you know, and so it was this paranoia onto you. We believe that actually, my husband got his passport taken by the police before we managed to escape from the country, he was once called by the police to come with his passport to the station. And so he came, and they told him, it’s not in the interest of this country of the state for you to have a passport, so give it back to us. And that meant that he would not be allowed to leave the country country after that, which was based on anonymous, you know, not anonymous, but only anonymous to us, we think that we might know who might be the person that it was one of the closest people whom we shared some ideas with, and then they got, you know, to, to those hands. And so it took a while for him to actually be able to travel, my father had to intervene, you know, somehow, because he had some connections. As a pharmacist, they all needed him, you know, they all were sick, you know, people with problems with alcohol, and, you know, and they kind of needed all kinds of bills to to help them, you know, problems. Exactly. So, eventually, you know, he got a passport that allowed us to go to Yugoslavia, you know, to the former Yugoslavia as a country, which we did. And I managed to actually stand overnight in a queue to get to the door of the travel agency in time to get that trip to have one day trip to Venice within that trip to go Slavia. Right. And so that’s how we escaped with, you know, just one day possibility to get to the west, without any luggage any money, you know, we had nothing

Matthew Dols 12:51
obvious that you

Alena Foustková 12:52
cannot take anything. Exactly, yeah. Wow. Yeah. So, anyway, the system really was for some people, it might not cause you any problems, you know, if you had a job that did not conflict in any way, you know, with, with the system, you did not question it, or you did not provoke it in any way. But as an artist, it was, you know, quite different. And I did not want to subordinate myself, you know, to, to being told, you know, what I can do or what I cannot do?

Matthew Dols 13:30
Yeah, I felt similar in the United Arab Emirates, going from a reasonably open and free country in America to a Sharia law country. It’s not, it wasn’t explicit, they didn’t like tell you, but they sort of alluded to you like, it wouldn’t be in your best interest to do it wouldn’t encourage the same,

Alena Foustková 13:53
you know, all these authoritarian systems are like this, right? They just advise you, you know, it’s not in your interest, to not give your work to an exhibition that that celebrates the victory of the Russian army or the Soviet Army during the Second World War, for instance, you know, like leave was constant celebrations, you know, of the sort.

Matthew Dols 14:20
Yeah, I couldn’t do an exhibition in Israel, let’s say. It’s just it’s very interesting. I mean, we, artists, you mean, we think that this kind of stuff doesn’t really matter, and it doesn’t really influence us. We think, oh, we’ll be creative regardless, and all this but like, it does affect us.

Alena Foustková 14:40
You censor your mind, basically, right? You even censor yourself before somebody else censors you. And I didn’t want that. My husband was also very much frustrated, you know, as a person as a human being, with not being able to live with kind of a free young mind. You know, And especially when we thought of having the kids you know, and in that system we thought we could not do it your children if you had any, and we wanted them to, to grow up in a free society.

Matthew Dols 15:13
And so you moved to Canada.

Alena Foustková 15:14
So we moved to well, we moved first. Through that trip, we escaped through Venice through Italy, we had friends waiting us at the San Marco square, who actually emigrated to Austria some years before. Sounds like

Matthew Dols 15:32
a movie, but it’s great go.

Alena Foustková 15:35
And they took us secretly through the border in their small car theater ritmo, they had the smallest car that we all had to cram inside. All four of us it was the friend

Matthew Dols 15:47
was his wife, you weren’t in the trunk or anything like

Alena Foustková 15:50
not in a trunk quiet. But at the border, it was also quite interesting. How we got from Italy to Austria,

Matthew Dols 15:59
bribe, I’m sure bribed.

Alena Foustková 16:01
No, no, no bribes. No, no, we’d not didn’t have to bribe anybody. However, because in the system behind the so called iron curtain, you had no information, we had no knowledge of what it’s like whether in, in Italy, they would let us stay in if we went to the police and said, We want to stay, you know, here, we don’t want to go back, we feel that, you know, we would be arrested and all that we were actually sentenced to three years in present in absence, you know, when we wrote that, in this country. And so we wanted to get to Austria, which was a neutral country, that we know, you know, that much we know knew, and we thought, you know, Australians might not give us back through the treaties, you know, and that we would be safe there. So we had to get through the border. And so they took us in the car, you know, across the border, and that time everybody got checked, it was no Schengen, no European Union, of course, you know, and as we were approaching the checking point, I’m getting

Matthew Dols 17:11
nervous, just listening. Yeah,

Alena Foustková 17:14
it’s getting more exciting. You know, as I, as I continue, there was a long line of cars, because it was in summer, and people were going for the weekend, you know, from Austria to Italy, and back again. And so we didn’t know, you know, what it would be like, until we actually got there and was too late to do something, you know, to kind of say, we are getting off going through the forest. And, you know, we’ll meet you at the other side, which was also risky, we thought. So our friend actually went ahead, the one who drove and he came back and said, it looks fine. And they were just letting the cars through. And that was the Italians, they kind of let the cars through out of their country. They didn’t care. But then we got to that in between part and and then we saw that the Austrians checked every car, you know, in front of us just for a brief moment. Sure, the passport, which we didn’t have, actually they took us our passports. At the boat, we went from Yugoslavia to values by boat. And the tour guide took away our passports, you know, they gave us the passports before we got checked. And then right after the check point, they took the passports again and kept them so we had no ID, we basically had our driving license only, you know, that’s what we had as ID. And so we didn’t have any passports for the check, you know, of the border control. And our friends had only the emigrant passports, which didn’t allow them to get out of the country, because they were freshly in Austria, and they were not supposed to leave the country. So they held those two passports, we had nothing, you know, and so we came closer and closer, and the car in front of us got checked. Now we are approaching and the officer is just leaning down to the window to see you know, the passports and and that moment, his colleague from inside, called him and talk to him in Austrian in, you know, saying something to him. So he turned from us to speak with him for a couple of minutes. And in that time, we just slowly moved, you know, away from there. And he turns back and he checks the other car after us so we didn’t get checked.

Matthew Dols 19:35
That’s how I’m telling you the movie. Just like the randomness of those little moments.

Alena Foustková 19:42
That’s crazy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. We had a nice bottle of wine, you know to drink afterwards. Yeah, I’m telling you.

Matthew Dols 19:51
Alright, so back to sort of your art endeavors and stuff like this. So before you left, the check repo, check Czechoslovakia, the time where you said were you were you making artwork at the time

Alena Foustková 20:05
I was I was just freshly finished or graduated out of the Academy. I was one here at home, which was in Ostrava in the Moravian. region. And then, actually, when we escaped, we had to wait about half a year in Austria, near Vienna. And kind of a Benzion for people, you know, who wanted to apply for other countries. And we were not allowed to stay in Europe, because we are not as persecuted or imprisoned, you know, so, because Europe at the time did not want to take any more immigrants from this part of the world. Again, nothing’s changed, right? Yeah, exactly. And they’re always, you know, barriers, and wrong time of leaving. And so we were offered to go to any other continent, we could choose from Australia or America. And we chose Canada, you know, because we thought, we saw a couple of documentary movies, or films, and the library in Prague, and we thought this is a nice country, you know, we would be nice to, to live in Canada, it’s very social, that much we knew. And it I think it was a great choice. You know, we really loved living there. And I started to work in advertising there, actually, you know, that’s where I’m getting how I started to work at what I’m doing now, from the printmaking. I got actually a one year course at college in Toronto, which was paid by the Canadian government. And that was in commercial arts. And I thought, Oh, that’s something useful. I didn’t feel that I had something in my hands from avil. That would give me any practical knowledge that I could apply for work anywhere, and I had to make living somehow. Right.

Matthew Dols 21:56
Well, that’s something I want to circle back to later. Okay, good. damia non prepared?

Alena Foustková 22:02
I think it’s still very much like that, you know? And that’s my Yeah,

Matthew Dols 22:05
we’ll come back to

Alena Foustková 22:07
Okay. Okay. And, and so I was happy that I took this course I met Canadians, you know, I studied with Canadians at that school. And so I quickly kind of emerged, submerged into the Canadian culture, then I started to work in advertising in the business, you know, like, really in the head of agencies, or one private company first, which made me work on just small leaflets. You know, that’s just the most stupid kind of leaflet you can imagine, you know, that sells the dry cleaning for 10% of

Matthew Dols 22:43
something like that, or hanger. Yeah, exactly.

Alena Foustková 22:44
That you shove into an envelope, you learn and you give to people. And I really hated it. You know, after about three months, I was away or gone from there. And then I worked for some other advertising agencies and, and then 1989 came in in between we had our son born, and I was home for a couple of years and worked freelance. And when that happened, suddenly, there was a big interest in people with experience in advertising in this country, Ryan Hall spoke check who spoke English, who actually knew what this business is about. And so I heard I was headhunted by somebody from Toronto. Who said, Well, this international agency is such and such, he needs our directors Would you be interested in and I said, Well, yeah. Have you heard of such and such? I guess you muster? Sure it? Yeah.

Matthew Dols 23:47
Well, that seemed like now I know such at nine. I mean, yeah, it’s possible. I didn’t know.

Alena Foustková 23:55
It’s interesting, because it was not only the advertising world, but Charles Saatchi, one of the two brothers became one of the top collectors of contemporary art in the world and Ingraham. Right? Well, not directly, not

Matthew Dols 24:13
great.

Alena Foustková 24:14
It would be lovely. I never met him. Unfortunately, I still get news from such and such a, you know, the young art or collection of art, which are offering me to buy young art. Not so, so much, you know, my vein of interest. However,

Matthew Dols 24:33
the price point you’re willing to disband as such is not cheap, generally. For sure. Yeah. Nobody.

Alena Foustková 24:39
It was a great experience. I actually came to Prague in 1995 in the fall of 95. And I thought, you know, this is great the way it’s going, you know, the country was already kind of opening up even though there are still so many imperfections, you know, at the time, but I told my husband who stayed in Canada, he stayed hind with our son, who was six at the time and just started. First grade, that they should stay there. I’ll see what it’s like here on my own. And then about I don’t know, a couple of months later I told him, you know, like, maybe you should pack it up rent out the house, you know that we recently bought a small house in Toronto and move over. It’s great here. You know, they did eventually. Yeah, it was. Yeah, for sure. It was so very hopeful, you know,

Matthew Dols 25:27
cheap.

Alena Foustková 25:27
Cheap, too. Yeah. Yeah. So so we bought, actually some land. That’s where we are now. Yeah. And we had this house built where we speak. And it was like a nightmare, you know, to go through all the permits and stamps, and it was still really complicated to build a house at that time.

Matthew Dols 25:48
I hear that it’s still complicated. Still, probably. I have not personally done it yet. But the place where I’m current, my wife and I are currently living the building is still under renovations. The owner keeps telling me that the stories of the permitting and getting workers getting workers is 40

Alena Foustková 26:06
permits 40 stamps that we had to collect from, you know, all these parties, you know, it was nuts. So we did this, you know, and and I’ve worked for much longer than in advertising. I’ve worked for another company after that, because Saatchi actually decided to close their offices after a few years, about five years that I worked for them and move the offices only to Budapest, that it would be there like a head office for Eastern Europe. And yeah, and then later they came back, you know, they realize that it was a silly idea. Yeah. And Budapest is good, I like Budapest. But they still you know, would lose clients, you know, who needed this market. And Well, anyway, they are back for many years. In the meantime, I started to work for a French advertising chain, which is called or at the time, it was called euro rscg. It was an abbreviation of the four owners who started the company by the first letters of their last names. Now it actually falls under Havas, which is maybe more known, huge chain advertising chain, I think it’s one of the first three or four in the world. And I stay there for another eight years, because advertising kind of absorbs you. And it’s very hard to still do something on the side because the hours are long. And it’s you know, kind of creative work. But it’s draining you,

Matthew Dols 27:42
let’s get a little bit into that kind of stuff. Because this is what I’m really the podcast is trying to be about because a lot of people say, if you can’t make your what generally is referred to as like free art or your personal artistic expression, sometimes people say oh, just get a job doing something creative. And that will suffice you. Whereas other people say, get a job that uses none of your creativity so that you keep all your creativity for when you have the time for your own personal work. I’ve done both. I find that when I use my creativity at work, that I have no creativity Left, Right when I get home. So they did I felt you in that same way?

Alena Foustková 28:20
I would say so yeah, it was really difficult to force myself to do something on top of it. Plus, I still had a small child, you know, and to combine all these pressures, was really tough on the whole family, I would say my husband had to step in a lot, you know, because I would have to be in the evenings recording something or in studios and, or preparing a pitch for some new business, you know, and and you just

Matthew Dols 28:48
could not leave and were you exhibiting as an artist, like as a personal, you know, I’m trying to separate the or commercial arts from your personal work. So like, you were both by day being a commercial artist, and then by night still being a fine artist. Well,

Alena Foustková 29:05
it was not so much split, it was much more limited. I would say that I had an exhibition in Toronto, that was my kind of solo exhibition. And then here and there, you know, I participated in exhibitions, which would be like a group exhibition. However, it was not a consistent work, and I was frustrated. I could not do that. And so eventually, actually, in 2008, when the financial crisis came, offices needed to shrink, you know, personnel and kind of reduce salaries and whatnot. I decided, you know, that I was at the point when I was ready for the change. So I decided at still before that, actually, I was working for about one year for JW t which is another American, one of the oldest American advertising Companies in a creative director, yeah. And the pressure and the stress was already too much, you know, and I thought, well, I don’t need it, you know. And I thought, you know, at this point, if I don’t do it now, and I was 50 of the time, and that was already probably naive to start to go, you know, into the creative kind of art business, that most people would say, you know, just give up, this is too late for you. And I thought, well, I’m

Matthew Dols 30:29
46 is too late?

Alena Foustková 30:34
Oh, no, no, it’s, it’s it’s individual, I don’t think that it’s too late. I’m happy that I made the choice. And that I decided to completely kind of close off the advertising. And I never went back to the business, I only actually started to teach it, which was another interesting door opening to me to get into the, you know, kind of academic world, and to prepare courses, and to be able to share my knowledge and experience with, you know, young students that I enjoyed, and still enjoy, and still have been teaching quite a lot. And that gives me the freedom of time, you know, much more to combine it with my art commitments, you know, that I have, like, two, three days, you know, in a row that I can just focus on my art. And if I have a show, then I focused much more on it, of course, you know, and so it gives you a sustainable income.

Matthew Dols 31:36
Wait, I’m sorry, you have a sustainable in your art production?

Alena Foustková 31:40
No, no, not from the art from the teaching from the teaching, you know, you get a stable paycheck, kind of, it’s not much money. Of course, we know,

Matthew Dols 31:49
what’s not much money here,

Alena Foustková 31:50
right? Not here. Absolutely. But it’s still because, you know, we were fortunate enough to have invested in the house earlier on, and we don’t have any burden, you know, of mortgage. So what do we make, you know, as University teachers is kind of, okay, that we can live on? Okay. It’s not okay. If you had to, you know, raise kids or pay for apartment or buy something? I feel sorry for teachers now. Yeah, yeah. I

Matthew Dols 32:22
mean, you have grown kids, you have a house, it’s all paid off. So like, your general living expenses are substantially lower than most people’s.

Alena Foustková 32:30
That’s true. I’ve been fortunate. Also, because I made good income. I had good income in advertising, you know, for many years, that allowed us to save some money, you know, and to actually have this cushion, you know, of comfort know, that other people don’t have

Matthew Dols 32:47
Yeah, I mean, and this is, this is like the fundamental question, which is like, how do you find the balance of time, money, energy, whatever, to be able to have, like a happy life? in the arts? Or, or a life of fulfillment? whatever word you want to put to it, it’s just a word. But like, how do you how do you achieve that?

Alena Foustková 33:11
I find that it’s really difficult. I think it’s difficult everywhere. But here, it’s even more, because I think that the whole society is not being cultivated to buy art to actually buy from artists. So they are left without any buyers. You know, there are very few collectors, I think those collectors, you know, only focus on names that are already proven, they don’t want to take any risks, or they buy artists who are dead, and you know, the investment is secure or safe for them, or they’re very young, very young. Exactly, yes,

Matthew Dols 33:50
they’re being speculative and hoping that these people will be worth a

Alena Foustková 33:54
lot. I would say that in a way. I see my generation kind of lost, you know, because we lived under the communism when you know, we

Matthew Dols 34:04
were young.

Alena Foustková 34:05
Yeah, yeah, we could not really present our work to have exhibitions, you know, or dream about exhibiting abroad or, you know, making connections, most people could not do it. And then when we were kind of older, then everybody tried to focus on the young upcoming artists, you know, who came after the 1989. They still do my collectors, they still do.

Matthew Dols 34:28
I’ve been talking to a lot of gallerists. And a lot of them are intentionally basically going straight to the schools. Just as soon as they leave University and trying to get them early,

Alena Foustková 34:41
which I think it’s maybe a safe avenue to go because these artists could be valuable later on.

Matthew Dols 34:53
The Czech market is a very unique market, from my experiences, actually, oddly enough, I’m gonna say it’s not that you unique because when I lived in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Ronnie art, so art made by people born and raised in the Emirates, sold like hotcakes, they, they would sell for hundreds of 1000s of dollars, even though they’re just you know, just out of school and things like this. And then foreigners who exhibited, they didn’t care, they just would not care about didn’t care about them at all.

Alena Foustková 35:25
Something about the local market, you know that first, collectors are interested in the local artists, and it’s everywhere like this, I suppose

Matthew Dols 35:34
with and that’s what I’m starting to notice is like, we talked about how the the art market is an international global market, but more I keep talking to people in smaller regional places, even where I grew up, I was living last in North Carolina, they would buy from artists in North Carolina, before they would buy from an artist in New York, or LA or Chicago. So it seems like no matter how international and global the the art market, quote unquote, is, it’s actually becoming a lonely, it almost always starts local.

Alena Foustková 36:12
It does. I agree, I agree with that. I think people are more comfortable with finding the local artists, you know, who exhibit locally, especially in a small country, like Czech Republic, you don’t have that many artists who will live here and would be from different countries. You know, that’s another aspect that the Czech culture is very, one colored like, very, you know, limited in terms of influences from other cultures. And so people are not used to other thinking of other people, you know, who might see things differently than what they are used to

Matthew Dols 36:54
see, when I personally went, before I moved here, when I was thinking about moving here, I thought that this was a very multicultural place and very welcoming to a different ideas in this. And I believe that Prague is, it’s different, right? It’s, but the city of Prague is very unique in the country, a lot of rest of the country is not as receptive and not as globalized.

Alena Foustková 37:19
Absolutely. Still very localized. You know, if you go out of the capital, it’s like a different world, in a different mindset. It’s in Prague, you see tourists everywhere, and they are like, overwhelming, you know, to the city. But the Czech people who live in Prague are much more exposed to people from around the world, you know, and they are opening up for sure. You know, it’s it’s getting better, I would say better now is another place where it’s happening as well, even though it’s still on a much slower, more local, smaller scale.

Matthew Dols 37:56
I think the whole check everything check market, the check, government, the cat check industries, no matter what industry we’re talking about, I think it still needs about another 20 years, before it’s really going to get that real global influence. Because I think a lot of people who were still raised under communism, starting to, like retire and get out of influence and whatever. And the people who were all born after communism left, once they all start Becoming Empowered places of influence and power, that’s when

Alena Foustková 38:31
really check. It’s just it’s one more generation. If hopefully, the world moves in peace, right, and nothing happens. And we managed to have that stretch of time round, because it happened, you know, that it was Yeah, exactly that we always started something here and it stopped, you know, like the First Republic, for instance. And it was less than 20 years, you know, and if you look back since 1989, till now, it’s already longer than the first Republic, and it still takes so much longer, you know, to heal all the wounds, you know, that were caused by the damage, you know, during the communist time.

Matthew Dols 39:11
While this is very interesting, this is not a political podcast. So let’s get back to the arts. Okay. So, so yeah, so you were saying that the the market here is not as robust or as well educated or well influenced as we would like, let’s say,

Alena Foustková 39:27
that’s my impression, you know, like, I’m not professional, let’s say to as a, as an gallerist would be to make such claims. But my own experience is that a preference is to the young art as we discussed, and toward the dead artists Exactly. That it’s not taking too much risk. And or, but I cannot complain myself. You No, I have to really say that I’ve been very happy at what I’m doing. And I decided early on that I’m not going to do art, which would sell well, just for the sake of selling well, because one thing is to make something that people will like, and they will buy. But it’s not necessarily the quality that I would be happy with. And so I decided that, you know, I did commercial art or, you know, work making money for long enough, and I’m not going to settle for just something to to have a good feeling that it sells. And so I decided that I would go in the direction of doing what I like to do. And hopefully it finds somebody who will like it or will exhibit it. And so far, I have to knock on the wood that I’ve been really very fortunate. And I’ve been exhibiting in good galleries with interesting institutions, like the docks, or galleries. avni is very interesting and mikulov, it’s a gallery which exhibits more geometric abstract art most of the time, but they’re interesting institution. Or, you know, I also got a chance to work in Germany a couple of years ago as, as an artist who was selected into a program around the Danube region, you know, the Danube River. And I was the only one from the Czech Republic, who work there actually, along with the other international artists. And then it was in the city of Reagan’s work. And it was funded by European Union, you know, and I was an artist in residence there at first. And then they even funded the piece, you know, to stand in the city, which was kind of a large project installation that took me about a half a year to finalize was like a real project management with money, you know, that I had to manage and everything. That was a great experience. And now I just came back from Finland, from another artists residency that I was kind of proud to get into, because they make always very tight selection of artists, you know, who they take on. And so, as far as you know, that fulfilling myself and my creativity, I feel happy. I wish I could sell more. But sometimes that’s just doesn’t go hand in hand, you know, so much,

Matthew Dols 42:36
right. But so but you’ve been able to get residency, I am fascinated, because I’m always incredibly self conscious, and nervous and everything, when I get to write applications for whatever, I don’t care if it’s a grant or a residency or whatever. It’s nerve racking, I mean, is literally having to bare my soul in some some weight of a written form that somehow describes what I’m going to visually create. And it’s very difficult thing to try and translate effectively. And then also, like, fine, like, even find the right thing to apply for. So like, it’s so time consuming it is. And, like, tell me a little bit more about your experiences of trying to find the right residencies and then trying to figure out how to write the right. Application artists, I mean, whatever, like, you seem to have done it. Well.

Alena Foustková 43:39
I’ll tell you my experience, no, I don’t have that much of an experience,

Matthew Dols 43:43
where you applied for to and then got to, yes, that’s 100% success rate. So

Alena Foustková 43:50
but I have to say, it was a great school, the advertising world, you know, the business side, you know, that I learned how to deal with business. That definitely helped. It’s structured my thoughts, my way of expressing, you know, my ideas, it was very focused, I always had to be very focused in expressing what my clients needed. And so I just kind of applied it to myself in a way. And that’s what brought me to the conceptual way of thinking, you know, that I have an idea first, and then I find a way of, of delivering that idea. And so it’s kind of multimedia and on that I also worked in, due to that nature of how I express my ideas. And so for the residency in Germany, in Reagan’s book, I got recommended through the work that I did in Khan’s tower in Bratislava, where I exhibited one of the conceptual pieces, and the curator, who was the head curator of the constellar there The time he somehow, you know, liked to work with me. And he recommended me because he was on the panel of judges for Germany. Let me see how I got. I was gonna say, let

Matthew Dols 45:13
me hear what I’m hearing. So you got that you got that offer of that residency nominated for that because you were a part of a group show in Bratislava.

Alena Foustková 45:24
Correct? Yeah, so kind of lead from one thing to the next

Matthew Dols 45:28
thing is like, I want people who are listening to this podcast to sort of hear this look.to dot dot, you do this random group exhibition in Bratislava that use that, by itself doesn’t look like it’s really going to do much for your career.

Alena Foustková 45:44
In a way it did, because already to exhibit in the concert hall, I was already you know, great achievement, like to be there. Okay, so it was

Matthew Dols 45:51
a reputable,

Alena Foustková 45:52
it was a very reputable place. Yeah. But also because I exhibit first that same piece, which was called dictionary, you know, it was like a very participatory piece, which I really like to work on, you know, pieces like that, where people can step in and do something with the peace to participate. Through that show. It moved on to Slovakia to Bratislava, because it’s another at that time, it was in 19. Sorry, to 2016 when the crisis with the refugees was, you know, at its height, 2015 and 16. And so I worked on these pieces, which were partly political and, and partly social. That’s kind of where I feel that, you know, I want to express myself now. And they need it, you know, those pieces that would be opening up a discussion about that topic, you know, and and because this curator really felt that it worked for for the show, probably, well, he wanted somebody who could work in that conceptual way, in Germany, because it was based on very much of a conceptual way of thinking of finding creative spaces in the city and opening them up and presenting them in, in an artistic way to locals and the tourists who come to the city. And so he wanted a person who spoke English well, you know, who could communicate as well. And who was able to deliver, you know, that promise, you know, that kind of what they expected, you know, they expected somebody who could take care of, you know, the whole process, basically. So I think that I was lucky that way. I was a great project. And in Finland, you know, the second residency that I got, I applied actually about four times to get it. It wasn’t right away. I didn’t get it. Great thing to learn. Yeah, just keep persevering. You know, keep

Matthew Dols 47:59
okay. Okay, so you applied four times for this particular residency, because you really, really wanted to go to it. Did you do the same application four times, every year different every year? One thing that bothers me, like, I really wish there was some way to get this to happen, which is that we all will offer, so whatever it is, whether we’re submitting to a gallery, or whether we’re sending it to submitting to a residency or a grant, or whatever it is, we submit, and we basically get yes or no. But when we get either one, it doesn’t even matter. Yes or No, nobody ever helps us by, right. You know what I did? Right? Yeah. Was this this done? No, you got it. This is what you did wrong. Please try to justice for next year. Nobody gives us feedback to do it better.

Alena Foustková 48:45
I agree. It’s frustrating. And

Matthew Dols 48:49
tell you how to do it better.

Alena Foustková 48:51
You have to kind of figure it out for yourself. Yeah, the what you did wrong, maybe, you know, and try it from a different angle. Or maybe they get fed up, you know, with me, and they will give it to me eventually.

Matthew Dols 49:07
Who knows Julian Schnabel stuff?

Alena Foustková 49:09
Yeah. But no, it’s this time, I made it again, very kind of social and political at the same time, and they really wanted to hear you know that because in Finland, they seem to face similar problems with immigrants, opinions that people have very close minded. One color culture, and they they kind of wanted to hit that string, you know, that I wrote about, and it was something that resonated with them, you know,

Matthew Dols 49:43
I mean, the primary thing is, is basically like, you have to read the place you’re applying to doesn’t grant whatever Art Gallery, whatever it is, you read, what they what they intend to do, and you make sure that you actually hit the points of what they want to do that you

Alena Foustková 49:59
fit into their programs somehow I know but

Matthew Dols 50:02
some of them are very open with what their their program is and what their intentions are. And some of them are not. And so you just never know, if you’re hitting those points because they don’t offer those. They like vague things like, we want it to be socially conscious.

Alena Foustková 50:21
Then what does it say? about why, like, I think that it, it sort of comes to me, I feel that once you have sufficient amount of work behind you, that’s one thing that they look at, you know, how successful you are with what you are pursuing, you know, and which way you are going?

Matthew Dols 50:41
Well, that begs an interesting question. I have a friend who from grad school that uses a he he’ll he’ll feel successful the end of his career if he has an exhibition, just an exhibition every year for his entire life. Yeah, just wants one exhibition every single year. So it depends

Alena Foustková 50:57
on your goals, right? Yeah. If that’s what you want to job, then it’s great. Yeah.

Matthew Dols 51:01
But see, like, I had the problem where I made up, I guess I’m, I’m starting to learn, I made a huge mistake, where I went to the United Arab Emirates. And even before that, I was in Ohio, which was middle of nowhere, nothing plays. And I, there’s a huge gap in my career where I didn’t participate. I

Alena Foustková 51:20
did the same thing. Right? I was in Canada, and I came back right into the same gap, right? I wasn’t here. How do

Matthew Dols 51:27
you? How do you sort of get past that gap? How

Alena Foustková 51:29
do you just work and work in home, just kind of work? The best you can, with what you believe in your hope.

Matthew Dols 51:39
I walked out of the UAE I have six years, I was there for six years, I have six years worth of artwork that I was producing there, but it couldn’t exhibit while I was there. So I have a lot of artwork. Okay, but I but I haven’t exhibited. So everybody thinks it looks like if you look at my CV, it looks like I haven’t done anything for like, five years. But in reality, I’ve been doing a lot, but it just haven’t had the opportunity to. Like,

Alena Foustková 52:06
I think that Well, I think Americans are actually good at this, you know, like you have to push yourself a little bit, you know, into the door and, and sell yourself also to the people that you care about. Like I I’m not just waiting and sitting if somebody calls me, I make contact in order

Matthew Dols 52:27
to make that an American thing. Why does that be in America?

Alena Foustková 52:30
I think that Americans are? Well, for sure. I would say maybe more confident than than other countries, you know, and sometimes they can be That’s true. Yeah. It’s a balance. It’s a balance. Yes. But we admire that right? live in Europe, because now you

Matthew Dols 52:53
know, you don’t I know, lots of people that they really don’t appreciate. That’s true. Even my sort of assertiveness, let’s say, yeah, there are a lot of people to check out with

Alena Foustková 53:06
you, especially the checks. Yeah, they are very sensitive to that assertiveness, right? Because they were always told, be modest. Don’t sell yourself to others, right? If they want you, they will see that you are good. You know, and that’s

Matthew Dols 53:22
good. If you can’t exhibit Right, yeah. Your work sitting in your studio is not being seen by anybody. So you have to be assertive, you have to be proactive in getting your work out there. Or else nobody will see it. But there is a different thing that happens here that I’ve noticed, which is in America, in the smaller towns that I lived in. So let’s not say big cities that there weren’t many curators that I could just say, Hey, would you like to do a studio visit? You know, of course in New York, Chicago, la Yes, you could get curators to do a studio visit. But here it seems like it instead of being necessarily proactive and getting in exhibitions, you want to be proactive and getting more curators and people of that ilk so galleries, curators, those kinds of people to come do studio visits. So it’s not always about necessarily exhibiting your works as much as it’s just getting select people to view your work in some way.

Alena Foustková 54:21
Well, it goes hand in hand with if you have curators who believe in you, then they will be able to explain you to people, you know, who are your spokes people that and you need to have people like that. Well, it’s there is no no recipe for that.

Matthew Dols 54:43
Or is there a group is there like

Alena Foustková 54:45
you know what I did when I started and I I actually wanted to exhibit in in a good respected gallery and I didn’t don’t know so much. And I thought gallery of critics in Prague, you know, is a respected salary, you know, it’s like a guild of the art critics. And so I did that I had to pay quite a bit of money to exhibit there and be able to actually find my sponsors, you know, and and collect all the money to actually do to make a catalog to pay for the space and like I had to pay at that time. But I was willing to do that. And I asked a very respected art critic or curator, whose name was URI Bala very famous kind of art historian, you can also say, he ran the, the main gallery in Brno for many years the moon. And he was willing to come over and to visit my studio.

Matthew Dols 55:52
And he said to visit,

Alena Foustková 55:53
right, yeah, but I had to call him or two, I didn’t call him I wrote him, you know, a very kind of politely whether he would be willing to come. And he was very nice. And, and he wrote a number of texts about my work, which started to be more respected, you know, by others. And so you need somebody like that, you know, who is able to kind of guarantee the quality of what you are doing.

Matthew Dols 56:21
Right, which then leads on to another big question that I have about the contemporary visual art market. So in, in traditionally, so what you’re talking about is you’re talking about the early 90s kind of era?

Alena Foustková 56:36
No, that was already, like after 2008. You know, when I started? Yes, yeah. So much later

Matthew Dols 56:42
going on. Okay. Because what I’m seeing is, is that there’s, with social media and the internet, there’s such a glut of people that feel that their opinion is qualified, qualifying, critical, appropriate, whatever, that there’s so many people giving their opinions about art that the basically the public doesn’t know who to rely to trust on, like, the critics have lost their luster. It doesn’t feel like there are as many of them and as many of them that are as well respected,

Alena Foustková 57:19
I would say that there are still here in the country, you know, if you are in the business that you know, you know, who is so very, after or after sometime, you know, your work, no, was recognized, was trusted, or is like if if they are willing to work with you to curate your exhibition, then, you know, this already gives you that luster, that credit, you know, that that you do it with people like that. And it’s still quite a limited number of people, curators who are at that level. And that’s, I think that if you want to be really respected you, you need to find who those people are, and kind of be able to introduce yourself to them and to interest them.

Matthew Dols 58:02
And what I mean, that’s one of those things, okay, because I don’t care if you’re living in New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, here, wherever, okay, great. You write, an artist needs to connect with a curator. How does an artist connect with a curator like that, to me, as an artist, that is such a nebulous concept, sort of, like, yes, connect with a curator

Alena Foustková 58:26
was not easy. Yeah, no, it’s like a snowball. You know, it’s just like with the residences, you know, once you are approved, in a way, you know, with one, that’s what I was told, actually, by one journalist who writes about art. And I was telling him, you know, I got this Finland residency, and I had the German one. And he said, this is how it goes, because I’ve been on juries for residences, once you were successful in one is much easier to get the next one, and it goes like this. And it’s the same with the curators, once they find out that you interest somebody who is respected, they are much more willing to put their name in on under your exhibition or your work. I know it’s kind of silly that we are depending on the curators, as artists will but the honest truth is,

Matthew Dols 59:22
but that’s part of the big thing about the art world is that quite honestly, everybody depends on everybody. So we can say as artists do, you and I that we depend on curators, well in galleries, or galleries, but equally they, they depend on us on us like right because if we’re if there are not us making good quality works, either they’re not gonna be able to put on a quality exhibition as a curator or they’re not gonna be able to sell artworks as a gallery, and they’re going to basically lose their jobs. So I mean, it is it’s a symbiotic relationship in many ways. But it also always feels like as the artists were the bottom of the totem pole. Like we’re, we’re the ones that we rely on them, it feels like more than they rely on us.

Alena Foustková 1:00:10
I would say, Yeah, well, they have maybe more? Well, no, it’s not correct to say that they have more choices than we do. I think it’s the same. We can choose as from as many curators as they can choose from as many artists. And it’s goes both ways. It’s a matter of finding the click client with whom you find the match. And of course, my work doesn’t find meant with many curators who are not interested. And I had many experiences when they really were not interested. They don’t write you back. They are just kind of not on the other side. They are, you know, not not not receptive. Yeah.

Matthew Dols 1:00:52
What actually and you bring up the that issue and then the fact that you’re getting exhibitions in Bratislava, and doing residency in Germany and Finland starts to make me wonder like, so your work. Now you are Czech you work here your work is we’ll call it Czech related because you are a Czech. Yeah. But is your market, the Czech Republic? Or do does your interest both by buying and or supporting through grants, exhibitions, and residences? Does it seem like it’s more outside the Czech Republic?

Alena Foustková 1:01:28
Well, I guess the interest to exhibit could be outside of the Czech Republic. But to sell my work, I think I still haven’t found my market To be honest, you know, to, to find people who are willing to buy conceptual work, it’s not a piece of art that you put on the wall and let you hang in your living room. You know, and conceptual work is more difficult to sell, I would say to people, you know, because it’s sometimes not as tangible or it’s not just one piece. It’s it’s a series of things, you know, that is just not like a typical piece of art, I would say, you know, and I think that not as many galleries are willing to exhibit conceptual art here

Matthew Dols 1:02:15
itself. conceptual art across the board is very difficult. As seen with abstraction. They’re both very difficult things to sell. But conceptual art, at least the conceptual art, the works that I’ve seen of yours, are also very much sort of interactive, very installation based also, you’ve kind of put yourself into the character that you really can only sell to institutions and museums, I mean, people are not going to be buying an installation piece to put in their living room.

Alena Foustková 1:02:45
That’s what I’m hoping that Yeah, my work would be more of an interest to the institutions and museums, as you said. Gaskin, the gallery of the Central European region kind of took on a few pieces of mind for their permanent installation or exhibition nice. However, it’s always a struggle, you know, will they buy the work? Will they only exhibit it? Because they like to exhibit it? Yeah. But it is always limited that

Matthew Dols 1:03:16
there’s this museum, I apologize. I’ve never heard of this museum. But so this museum has your work on display, right? permanent display. But they haven’t actually bought it?

Alena Foustková 1:03:28
No, not yet. It’s in kutna hora, which is kind of a nice place, outside of Prague, very kind of historical, is a huge gallery of artists. They exhibit artists who are from this region from the central bohemian region, and it’s very respected institution, okay. And to get them by your piece, because many institutions would like you to donate the piece just to be able to write that you are in that institution that you’re in the National Gallery, right? For instance, how can you make a living, right? If nobody buys it? Why? Why is

Matthew Dols 1:04:08
it that all these places and people and institutions believe that artists can or would be willing to donate just donate art, their art, whatever, because it looks good on their CV, when we’re the one like they are running a large institution that has millions of euros to keep their doors open, pay their property taxes, pay their salaries, do all this kind of stuff, insurance, etc. And we’re here barely making enough money to be able to like keep all our housing and food in our bellies and they expect us to give them things for free.

Alena Foustková 1:04:45
Exactly. Well, I think that that’s that symbiotic relationship probably just got

Matthew Dols 1:04:49
myself in a lot of trouble. A lot. carried away you

Alena Foustková 1:04:54
know, it’s, it’s, it’s part of, maybe an way of exploitation of the artists you know, Well, that’s how I

Matthew Dols 1:05:00
profit or NGOs do this where they often ask artists donate works to charity auctions and things like this. I hate those. Why does a charity think that we can just give something that we put our time energy and money into? Give it to them for free, so that they can earn money off of it? Yeah,

Alena Foustková 1:05:20
exactly. I feel the same frustration as you are expressing because many people feel that maybe I could just give them my work. Okay. Just as friends, but you know, they make enough money to buy something. And so, I think that people should really reconsider their position towards the artists and that artists really need to be supported to be respected. Because the studies are very long, it takes six years, you know, at the Academy, you work the whole life to actually create the work that you do. And and you cannot just give it to somebody, because otherwise you cannot make a living as an artist, right? And it’s actually a privilege to be able to do it are everywhere, I suppose in the world, you have to be really good to be able to work as an artist, and still, you rarely get really well off by selling your work when

Matthew Dols 1:06:21
it isn’t. I mean, but that’s, that’s so sad. Yeah,

Alena Foustková 1:06:26
it is, yeah. Because the world is so commercialized. And people are not sensitive enough, I find, you know, when I teach art to students, that has history of, of Western art, I always start because many of them are business students. And then I tell them, you know, there is a side of business, but there’s also side of sensitivity, and the ability to see beauty and to support beauty, you know, in the world, because that’s what makes the world better, right? And you have to learn to put some money aside and to buy original art.

Matthew Dols 1:07:03
I’m a fan, I’m you don’t have to convince me.

Alena Foustková 1:07:05
No, I’m just saying it in general. Because I think that people don’t think about these things much, you know, and very few people are willing to be collecting art, and many of them are collecting art, because it’s a good investment, but they don’t understand it. They have curators who will choose the artists for them, you know, what’s worth buying. And it’s a business proposition. And it’s not about love for art.

Matthew Dols 1:07:33
Before starting this podcast, I sort of came up with this philosophy of what finds a successful artist in the industry. And I believe that there are four, maybe three, but probably four prongs that define when you have achieved a level of success. But that is a respected gallerist, a respected curator, a respected collector. And maybe the fourth prong, a respected publisher. If you can get all one, just one or if you can get all four of those, you will be successful. Because the it says great cycle, the publisher will get you more galleries, the galleries will get you more buyers, the collector will get you more into more institutions, the curator will get you more music. But like you trying to get those are like the the pinnacle, those four things, if you can get those four things in your life, in your artistic career, then like you’ve reached a level of success, that then starts that snowball that you’re talking about.

Alena Foustková 1:08:43
Yeah, I absolutely agree with you. I feel that that’s so I would maybe add one more pillar to it, which is auctions. If you have your work at auctions, hear at least you know, I don’t know how it’s in the world, that’s for sure. You know, at Sotheby’s, right, like Christie’s that’s the highest you can go. But even here, if you are at a respected auction, where other artists who are being collected are being offered, then you are in the rank, right of those people

Matthew Dols 1:09:16
who’ve seen it. This is an interesting thing. I have never heard of this before. Before moving here to Prague two years ago. I never heard of a living working artist selling their works in auctions. Usually it’s always the the auction market to me is a secondary market where the artists are no money from it, basically. So it’s whoever bought the work, they then resell it, they earn all the money. So the idea that living practicing artists can choose to put their work into auctions in order to create more than an established reputation. That’s a brand new thing I’ve never heard of before. So what is that I

Alena Foustková 1:09:56
think that you have the same structure at those respected houses that I mentioned, Christie’s or Sotheby’s living artists are selling their work there. I don’t know if it’s firsthand, I doubt that I think this is the secondary hand, as you say, I

Matthew Dols 1:10:14
think that’s like a gallery, ball collector to the reselling in a secondary

Alena Foustková 1:10:20
here. Yeah, actually this auction. People who started auctions, for instance, they are looking for artists and for works of art to a particular auction. And they are choosing who they take to that auction, right? If, if they give you a chance, for instance, if you are not known artists, they might take one piece, you know, and if it sells great, if it doesn’t, maybe they don’t give you the second chance after that, you know, because it’s, after all, something that goes into a catalogue. And they take their risks, basically. So they prefer to have artists who are already established who are more likely to be sold, rather than somebody who doesn’t have their name.

Matthew Dols 1:11:09
So known yet. And have you tried this? Have you? I

Alena Foustková 1:11:12
have Yeah, I have been approached by a specifically one auction house from Bernal and they took some pieces of of my work to their auction, and it didn’t sell. And I’m not in touch with them at the moment, you know. So I think that’s my experience, you know, how they would approach it, that they would go to present artists that they are more sure of earning them some money. That makes sense,

Matthew Dols 1:11:42
right? Yeah. I mean, of course, an art auction obviously wants names that they can sell Yes, like this, but

Alena Foustková 1:11:47
but to make the name first somewhere else? And then, you know, the auction is maybe another

Matthew Dols 1:11:53
how do we make the name? Like, I mean, this is one of those things like I’ve been, you know, I thought I understood how the art world worked. I’ll be honest, in the past 10 years, I wasn’t as active as I probably should have been. And I have suddenly realized that I haven’t no idea how it works. Now, it seems like there’s been a dramatic shift in how the art industry works between the internet and social media and the globalization yet not really seemingly globalization, but like the globalization of the arts world. How do you how do you do it these days? Like, how do you get out there? Like, are you an active user of social media?

Alena Foustková 1:12:35
Well, not so much. And I should start using Instagram more, you know, and I just kind of decided purposely for some time not to use it, because I thought of not being overwhelmed by social media too much. But I think that probably Instagram is a good thing, and I’ll give it a try.

Matthew Dols 1:12:55
I’ve had successes with Instagram.

Alena Foustková 1:12:59
But I would say that, like, what I did was things that maybe artists should not do, but I still did them. I went to parcel to Switzerland, for instance, to the to the you know, Art Basel to the big fair, and I found some galleries that I liked what they exhibited. And I had that first catalog, you know, that I printed in the first show or from the first show, and I spoke with some of them. And with one gallery in Berlin, you know, it kind of struck a chord, and she invited me to exhibit with their show in Berlin. And so you know, things that artists normally don’t do, I just thought, Well, what the heck, you know, I’m going to try it. Even though it’s not the way to do it. No

Matthew Dols 1:13:44
artists do it all the time. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Alena Foustková 1:13:46
Yeah, well, I don’t know. But normally, you have somebody who presents you to these galleries like a curator, right? They would present you and they would say, Oh, this is a person to watch out for. And I would be interested to do an exhibition with them.

Matthew Dols 1:14:05
I’ve been at art fairs, it’s very common for artists to go around with their catalogs in the galleries directly. It’s not super common, but it is common. I mean, I’ve done it, I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. I’ve even I’ve even done it myself. So like I get it. But again, it’s going back to that being proactive. If you have a chance, and you happen to be here in Prague, so you’re very close to Art Basel, which, you know, a lot of people in the world aren’t able to just like hop on a train, go to Art Basel. So I mean, the opportunity to be able to go there and literally sort of find some galleries that you believe you connect with and just chat them up is a great opportunity that most people in the world most artists don’t have.

Alena Foustková 1:14:49
Well, I do it all the time. You know, I just go to meet gallerist you know, and, and either it clicks or it doesn’t run and that’s how you Meet new people. And they are either on the same kind of wavelength, you know, they like what you do and they want to cooperate with you, or or nothing happens, right. But I think that Yeah, as you said before, you cannot just sit and wait and just do your work, that rarely happens during your lifetime that you will survive, you know, doing that. So, I think that’s actually at least what I do. And it’s not easy. It’s, I think that I am maybe not the right prospect for galleries, because of, you know, not being the young artist that is, you know, what we already discussed. And my age artists who stayed in the country would be already having all the connections, because, you know, they never fell out of those connections, right? That’s what we also talked about that, you know, if you are out, nobody knows about you, and you really have to work from scratch on building those contacts, you know, that you need? And

Matthew Dols 1:16:08
why? Well, that’s an interesting question, okay. Working in the commercial arts, when you did for pet 12, much longer, I’ve worked for over 20 years, 20 years of commercial art, in the in, in all honesty, and all sorts of bluntness, it has nothing to do with the fine arts, like being having a great reputation in the commercial art does not doesn’t help you

Alena Foustková 1:16:32
at all, no, of course, maybe it can hurt you, rather than help you, you know, that’s for sure. But it helped me, it helped me in the way I was thinking that actually I went my own way. You know, and if I never worked in advertising, never experienced, you know, the life in Canada, or all the experiences that we had, my world would be very different, you know, so to me, it was always enriching. And actually, it shaped what I do and how I do it.

Matthew Dols 1:17:04
The business side of it, I think, is part of

Alena Foustková 1:17:08
it. Also, the focus on on delivering clearly an idea, you know, and that’s what I’m trying to do. And that’s the parallel that actually make between advertising and Fine Arts. And that’s why I always like to work in advertising, I actually really enjoyed it, I enjoy the creative side of it, the challenging challenges of the new brief, you know, and tackling that problem, you know what to do about it? Actually, the process of thinking is the fun for me, even though it’s so hard, and I struggle with it, you know, and it’s painful, the same way as it is in advertising. Just as in fine arts, I would say it’s the same process of struggle. But in advertising, you get paid for it, you know, in art, it’s much more difficult to find the market,

Matthew Dols 1:18:01
we have talked about this with people in the past is like most industries you do where it’s sort of an A B thing, you do work, you get paid your salary, whereas the arts is you you don’t get paid, you don’t get paid, you try something you fail at it, you don’t get paid, you don’t get paid, you keep trying you fail at it until finally you find some success, and then maybe somebody might be willing to pay you for it.

Alena Foustková 1:18:22
Yeah, when you are 70 maybe. And it’s

Matthew Dols 1:18:24
never, it’s never enough to actually pay for all the time and energy you put into the cards missing things when I’m 64. Right. Yeah, who will care for me? Yeah. It’s so sad. Such a sad state of affairs, you know, back to the business of the arts, that was kind of a focus of this. So like, at this point, you are working as an artist, and you are also having to do your side hustles you have to do other things to create more standard incomes. So you’re teaching and Is that it?

Alena Foustková 1:18:57
Yeah, I teach I don’t work in advertising anymore. And I get my work paid for, mainly through institutions, like the German commission, you know, that I worked on was fully funded by the city of Reagan’s work, and that was, you know, a kind of an interesting challenge creatively, but at the same time, it was recognized for the value you know, that it had and they paid for it. So, so they

Matthew Dols 1:19:37
paid you a good looks basically as you had the equivalent of a salary being built into the cost of not

Alena Foustková 1:19:42
a salary it was it was a sum of money that we agreed on that I will make, it was a large construction, metal construction, which weighed 600 kilos, you know, and then I had to have a company make it for me, I had architect I had to pay people to do it. I Static engineering are difficult.

Matthew Dols 1:20:02
But my interest is, and you were able to take home some money for you,

Alena Foustková 1:20:06
it was up to me how much I’m able to say for myself, you know, out of that commission.

Matthew Dols 1:20:13
Yeah. This it’s a tough market word tough, very tough very hard. It’s, I still love to do that. But sometimes it wears me out. And I feel like maybe I don’t feel like struggling so much so hard. And maybe it’s for younger people to do and, and then again, you know, something else comes up. And I like doing it again, and kind of enjoying that work, but always hoping that it will do better than it does, basically, you know, that’s the frustration. We have to have that though, like if we don’t hope that our work is well received or anything like that, like nobody else will. You know, one thing that was taught to me when I was in school was nobody else in the world is going to be your cheerleader, nobody else is going to care whether you succeed or your work is well received or anything like that more than you like, so you have to be your own advocate. Yeah, whatever you want to call it. But you can’t rely on anybody else to do it for you. I mean, yes, in a perfect world, our gallerist would do it for us, but not everybody has a gallerist So, and not every gallery will do that work, some some will, some won’t. So you still have to sort of Believe in yourself, and you have to be some amount of self confident to be able to even be in this industry.

Alena Foustková 1:21:39
Yeah, it’s definitely at first it’s a it’s a lot of hard work, you know that you have to be very honest with yourself, you know, if what you’re doing is, is really so original and and so special, that you cannot do it better, you know, then than what you have done?

Matthew Dols 1:22:00
Yeah. Oh, yeah. I often do portfolio reviews of photographers. And I’m constantly looking at photographers just being like, yeah, it’s lovely. You technically did. This is a beautiful image. But I’ve seen it before. Exactly, yes. It’s like, what are you adding it like I’ve this to terminology that I use, which is I want to see work that adds to the vernacular of the medium. Like, I want to see you. I love that you have an homage to some great artists of the past. But I want to see you adding something more to it. What’s the new thing that you’re introducing to the art world that wasn’t there? Because it wasn’t made by you?

Alena Foustková 1:22:37
And that’s I suppose what, you know, all these professional people have been looking for in part, right, if it’s there or not. Sometimes it can be kind of artificially instilled in it. But I heard some advice by some. I don’t know, internet, people who said that, we have to keep at it, keep doing it. And that’s the only way of doing it.

Matthew Dols 1:23:06
Great. So wrapping it up. Last two questions. You’ve listened to my podcast before so you know what these last two questions are going to be? So what’s your advice about trying to be successful in the arts? And we are however you define that word? What’s that thing that you could impart upon listeners about being successful?

Alena Foustková 1:23:27
Well, honestly, when I started, again, you know, to get myself into the art world. After all those years in advertising, I told myself, that I want to do work, which I would be happy about that I could sign my name under. And that was my goal, you know, like to do things that I enjoy doing. I didn’t think about success at that time. And success is nice, but you cannot push it. And you have to wait for it. That’s my advice.

Matthew Dols 1:24:07
Okay, as good as any. Then the last question, of course, is my question about the Museum of Modern Art. You’ve heard this, I’m sure. And I’m sure the listeners have heard my whole spiel on it. But I’m going to say it again. So the The question is, if I want to get a piece of my art work exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art, what would your recommendation be? It can just be a step in the process. It’s not the end process. So meeting particular curators, yeah, you’re working with

Alena Foustková 1:24:38
meet a curator for MoMA? I actually did you know, when I exhibited in New York, in the check the house, you know, there is a building of the Czech culture and there was a curator for MoMA who came to see the show. And I didn’t know it she was, I think an external curator. Try the time. And she liked the work in and I had a nice discussion with her. But I just didn’t take it anywhere from from there, which was silly. Probably. Probably Yeah, probably. Yeah. But I guess that your work to be at the level that you will catch their interest because you know, there are people who saw many, many things. And it has to be something that is meaningful, and that kind of touches their heart or you know, anybody’s heart, not just theirs. It has to be work that connects with people. And if you can do that, you know, then I think people recognize it and the accurate result of also recognize it. And if you do it well, you know, in a specific style or way that other people don’t do, then you might make the first step you know, but to get that originality is not an easy work and it takes time to get to it.

Matthew Dols 1:26:08
All right. Well, thank you very much for your time. It was my pleasure. Good luck.