UNCLE ORACLE
19/4/2026—31/5/2026
Curated by Piotr Sikora
MUD
Museum of Arts and Design
Benešov, Check Republic
It is said that Uncle Orakel knows the future. Supposedly, he can read it from fragments of architecture. Art Nouveau suits this purpose best — the old seer divines the tangled paths of the future from floral ornaments and from faces with lifeless eyes that gaze proudly at us from friezes and the capitals of pilasters. What exactly does he see in them? Keyvan Paydar invites us to create concrete visions of the future and to work with them using a tool called Orakel. Within it, we can discover what future awaits us and share our own vision of what the world should look like in 5, 10, or 15 years.
Keyvan Paydar (*1984 Teheran, lives in Graz) studied painting and anthropology of art in Iran and sculpture with Markus Wilfling and ceramics with Irmgard Schaumberger in the master classes at Ortweinschule, Graz. Since 2013 he works as a freelance multimedia artist, art educator, musician and independent curator among others at „Atelierhaus Schaumbad Graz“ where he is working also as a board member since 2021. Paydar took part in international exhibitions, symposiums and residency-programs, ran a pop-up gallery in Graz and organized regional and international art projects.
Fotos: Silvie Heřmanská Korenkovawww.fotografka.cz/
The exhibition Uncle Orakel was developed by Artist Keyvan Paydar and Curator Piotr Sikora and drew on several principles present in Keyvan's previous works, including community-based artistic practice, confabulation, role-playing, and radical engagement, where the boundary between art makers and art viewers becomes blurred. The central narrative of the project revolved around Uncle Orakel, a fictional persona created by Keyvan who is able to foretell the future by reading architecture. In this case, the source of these predictions was the unique architecture of Símová Síň of Museum of Arts and Design Benesov, the space in which the exhibition was presented.
The core element of the exhibition was the Orakel—a claw machine that Keyvan had previously incorporated into his project QUOTENSCHEICH (organized by Kunsthaus Graz in 2023), where visitors could catch visions of the future hidden inside plastic capsules. The visions contained in the capsules came from two sources. The first was a collection box located in the museum, where visitors could contribute their own visions of the future using a questionnaire available in the gallery space. The second box was placed at a popular gathering spot in the town centre, the fast-food stand U Samičky, run by the charismatic local personality Simona. Thanks to her charm and sociable nature, Simona encouraged many local residents to contribute their own predictions to the Orakel.
The exhibition was based on a participatory principle. Visitors could retrieve a vision from the Orakel, leave their own note about the future to be added to the machine, and interact with the stickers available throughout the exhibition, leaving traces on the silver surface spread across the gallery floor. Another important participatory element involved casts made from the Art Nouveau ornamental plasterwork found in Símová síň itself. Since the future was supposedly readable through architecture, the idea emerged that Keyvan would create a series of mask casts based on these decorative elements. Every visitor who contributed a vision of the future would receive one of these casts at the end of the exhibition. Throughout the exhibition, the museum hosted workshops during which visitors could learn how to make plaster casts themselves.
This brings us to the exhibition's closing event, for which we prepared an evening programme consisting of workshops led by Keyvan as well as activities organised by his collaborators. OBJECT:PARADISE premiered an experimental film entitled Anti-Climax, which was simultaneously recorded and screened within the gallery space. Urban Space Epics and invited guests presented a music programme that gradually evolved into an improvised jam session—a genuine outburst of spontaneous creativity. By involving everyone present, we concluded the exhibition with a collective celebration of artistic expression across multiple disciplines, including spoken word, music, film, performance, dance, and visual arts. In addition to the masks, another outcome of the exhibition was the silver floor covering, fragments of which were cut out, preserved, and archived by Keyvan. These remnants may eventually become the material for a future artistic project.
The project would not have been possible without the dedication and enthusiasm of the members of the MUD team. They participated in workshops during which the first visions of the future were written in Czech, contributed to the promotion of the accompanying programme and public events, and assisted with both the installation and deinstallation of the exhibition. Their commitment and willingness to engage with the project at every stage played a crucial role in its realization.
Fotos: Libor Galia
The core element of the exhibition was the Orakel—a claw machine that Keyvan had previously incorporated into his project QUOTENSCHEICH (organized by Kunsthaus Graz in 2023), where visitors could catch visions of the future hidden inside plastic capsules. The visions contained in the capsules came from two sources. The first was a collection box located in the museum, where visitors could contribute their own visions of the future using a questionnaire available in the gallery space. The second box was placed at a popular gathering spot in the town centre, the fast-food stand U Samičky, run by the charismatic local personality Simona. Thanks to her charm and sociable nature, Simona encouraged many local residents to contribute their own predictions to the Orakel.
The exhibition was based on a participatory principle. Visitors could retrieve a vision from the Orakel, leave their own note about the future to be added to the machine, and interact with the stickers available throughout the exhibition, leaving traces on the silver surface spread across the gallery floor. Another important participatory element involved casts made from the Art Nouveau ornamental plasterwork found in Símová síň itself. Since the future was supposedly readable through architecture, the idea emerged that Keyvan would create a series of mask casts based on these decorative elements. Every visitor who contributed a vision of the future would receive one of these casts at the end of the exhibition. Throughout the exhibition, the museum hosted workshops during which visitors could learn how to make plaster casts themselves.
This brings us to the exhibition's closing event, for which we prepared an evening programme consisting of workshops led by Keyvan as well as activities organised by his collaborators. OBJECT:PARADISE premiered an experimental film entitled Anti-Climax, which was simultaneously recorded and screened within the gallery space. Urban Space Epics and invited guests presented a music programme that gradually evolved into an improvised jam session—a genuine outburst of spontaneous creativity. By involving everyone present, we concluded the exhibition with a collective celebration of artistic expression across multiple disciplines, including spoken word, music, film, performance, dance, and visual arts. In addition to the masks, another outcome of the exhibition was the silver floor covering, fragments of which were cut out, preserved, and archived by Keyvan. These remnants may eventually become the material for a future artistic project.
The project would not have been possible without the dedication and enthusiasm of the members of the MUD team. They participated in workshops during which the first visions of the future were written in Czech, contributed to the promotion of the accompanying programme and public events, and assisted with both the installation and deinstallation of the exhibition. Their commitment and willingness to engage with the project at every stage played a crucial role in its realization.
Fotos: Libor Galia
