UMELEC Magazine Launch

FREE from 1pm until 10.30pm

You're warmly invited to the launch of the new Umelec magazine, so-called "Transition issue". On display will be rare early issues of Umelec, recent releases and a selection of amazing books.

There will be a short introduction about Divus, Umelec and related affairs by publishers Ivan Mecl and Naomi Green at 8.30pm.

The Divus Publishing house was established by Ivan Mecl in 1992 as an art publishing house with a technically-equipped production centre. Over time the project grew and now has a broad influence with cultural production. One of the first publications was a fairytale by Tomáše Vejdovský, designed and illustrated by Markéta Othová, who has worked closely with Divus since the beginning. After several book publications the studio published its first edition of the art review Divus . This large-format publication brought together outsider art, style, the alternative, the exclusive and the tasteless – the first three issues defined the way for the whole project. Find out more at www.divus.cz ....

Umelec Magazine has run since 1997 in Prague, Berlin and later in London. It is directed to the international scene, particularly the wider European circle. Its emphasis on art in Central and Eastern Europe stems from its unique position in that region. Because Umelec is published in three separate languages (English, German an Czech), it has distributors, readers and contributors from all over the world. The magazine reaches out towards other regions that have hitherto only received peripheral or insufficient attention. The sections that were originally limited to local regions are being transformed to international. The new sections' writing penetrates cultural areas with creative courage. Umelec rejects a lingering dominant apolitical approach to art. The magazine demonstrates how life and culture work together, and stands critically against tendencies to limit art to some safe place to which the public has limited access. Visual culture is always rendered accessible to the non-specialist, as a type of mental activity in which the individual always participates without merely consuming. The magazine relies on intelligent journalistic analyses in search of ways this subject can thrive. Umelec doesn't follow trends, but reveals their own limits, and lays the groundwork for new ones.

It leaves correct judgment of the world to others and with cool calm opens to a period of chaos and conflict, because it is only through them that an image can emerge from the innumerable channels of the expanding delta of today's visual culture.

Find out more at www.umelec.org or www.divus.cz/london