Proto Gallery Systems

The Clueless Agency

The Clueless Agency series is guided by the possessed mind of a zealous private eye who only gets lost in the case: consumed by unfathomable details and connections, the detective descends into psychosis, indulging in unsound procedures. Throughout the series, the detective figures metaphorically as a sort of “rag doll”, to which one can pin different ideas: a curator of PGS, an individual contributor to the Clueless Agency series, or the viewer themselves. The diffractions of the detective’s body and mind mirror PGS’s interest in the chaotic transformations of reality, inviting illusion, fabulation, and forgery as integral strategies. The published documentation thus forms a dense detective yarn, which allows one to trace motifs across individual shows: images repeat, migrate, and twist across time and space, sometimes regrowing as algorithmic mutations that further alter (our memory of) the narrative.

Nobody Home (Performed by Marie-Luisa Purkrábková), participative performance – Clueless Agency: The Stair Case -Nah …Nobody Home (Ding-Dong Lullaby) at Laichter House, Prague, 2024

Monika Kováčová, Untitled, 2021 – Clueless Agency: Ward no gateman, draw on nametag, pals spit peels, slap, tips, sleep & Clueless Agency: Cold Case at Karlin Studios,Prague, 2021

Hanna Umin, Your Fate (Kuoros), 2021 – Clueless Agency: Inside a Wormhole of an Overripe Apple (The Hangman’s Song) at NO MOON, New York, 2022

Clare Koury, Wish Machine 4, 2024 – Clueless Agency: The Last Witness of Sator Sq., New York, 2024

Matyáš Maláč, Nation Politics, Nerocapitalistic version, 2022 – Clueless Agency: Rozkošný most a jiné zpropadené tools at TOKAMAK GOLEM, Prague, 2022

Paul Barsch, Feelings, 2021 – Clueless Agency: The Stair Case -Nah …Nobody Home (Ding-Dong Lullaby) at Laichter House, Prague, 2024

Jakub Hájek and Fratišek Hanousek, Fumigator Glysis, 2021 – Clueless Agency: The boat is leaking, no one cares (Bottomless Chasm Awaits) at MS City of York/Mediterranean Sky, Athens, 2021

The Sole Row House Illuminated by the Street of Broken Lamps, 2021 – Clueless Agency: Ward no gateman, draw on nametag, pals spit peels, slap, tips, sleep & Clueless Agency: Cold Case at Karlin Studios, Prague, 2021

Photography by Vojtěch Novák

Proto Gallery Systems

has been creating off-site exhibitions since 2018, bringing together Czech and international artists in locations around the globe. Acting as both a nomadic gallery and a collaborative artistic entity, PGS examines the possibilities of collective creation and curation, probing new methods and formats of exhibition-making across the digital/afk divide. Between 2021 and 2025, the collective has conducted a nonlinear narrative investigation through a series of exhibitions titled “Clueless Agency”. The first instalments included the off-site show Cold Case in a burnt-out cabin in the Iron Mountains, Ward no gateman, draw on nametag, pals spit peels, slap, tips, sleep at Karlin Studios, FUTURA Centre for Contemporary Art, and shows at several other locations, including an artificial coal mine at the National Technical Museum in Prague, the Prison Museum in Uničov, or New York’s No Moon. Some of the later chapters unfolded at even less likely places—the show The Boat Is Leaking, no one cares (Bottomless Chasm Awaits) transpired on a half-submerged ocean liner near Athens, while Rozkošný most a jiné zpropadné tools took the shape of a public event at the fusion reactor facility Tokamak Golem. The series culminated in a one-day exhibition and a performance The Stair Case – Nah … Nobody Home (Ding-Dong Lullaby) in the historical interiors of Prague’s Leichter house and in The Last Witness of Sator Sq. exhibition project, which took place in 2025 during the “Manhattenhenge” celestial event in New York.

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WWW: https://www.pgs.gallery/