Ivan Mečl

Ivan Mečl (1968) is an artist, critic and organiser. In 1992 he founded the Divus publishing house, which published the magazine Umělec (1997-2016) and a number of books. He is an active cultural organiser and has also revitalised a number of dilapidated buildings - for example, he tried to establish the Praha-Vyšehrad Cultural Centre, but the Czech Railways eventually backed out of the signed contract. In 2011, he founded the community centre Divus Pragerkabarett in the Prague Transport Company building in Holešovice. Between 2014 and 2018, he ran the Perla cultural space in an abandoned paper mill in Vrané nad Vltavou. In 2018, he and his friends managed to buy a former yarn factory built in 1910 on the outskirts of Kyjov near Česká Lípa in northern Bohemia. He is currently building the Nová Perla cultural centre there, which includes the Perla café, the Divus publishing house, a bookshop, studios and a gallery. The informal collective of colleagues is involved in the revitalisation of the area around Nová Perla, creating a vegetable garden and there are also plans for a park with local tree species. Nová Perla works with similar initiatives on the basis of partnership and exchange. They strive for autonomy and sustainability. (2021)

In 2013, he received the Věra Jirousová Award for his contribution to art criticism.

Writings

• Articles in Umělec (multiple languages)

Interviews

• Petr Štengl, "Marnost je svoboda. Rozhovor s vydavatelem časopisu Umělec Ivanem Mečlem", Psí víno 49, Sep 2009, pp 7-8. (Czech)

• Marie Voslářová, "Mečl, Ivan", iliteratura.cz, 20 Jan 2017. (Czech)

• Eliška H. Černá, "Utopie v rozpadlé niťárně. Nadšenec si na konci světa buduje svůj nezávislý svět", Deník N, 27 May 2020. [1] (Czech)

• Lenka Dolanová, "Jako výprava přes Antarktidu. Rozhovor s Ivanem Mečlem, Nová Perla – spolek Perla", in Kartografie (Eko)systémů: Black Edition, Prague: Agosto Foundation, 2021. (Czech)

Literature

• Jiří Ptáček, "Medaile pro hnidopichy", Novy prostor 418, 2013. (Czech)

• Josef Ledvina, "Mečlova Perla", Art+Antiques 11, 2014. (Czech)

Links

• History of Divus
• Presentation about Divus, video, 7 min, 2016