TOMÁŠ ABSOLON / MONET ON MY MIND

The events that are present in Tomáš Bárta's paintings take place between two spaces and the partition between them. These pictures inevitably set a "backward course" through the history of European painting, all the way back to Leon Battista Alberti’s reflections on the construction of pictorial space which he incorporated into his seminal work De pictura (1435). However, instead of a well-organised renaissance arrangement, Bárta offers us more ambiguous spatial relations and a spectral illusion of the objects inhabiting his paintings, as if architecture produced its own ghosts.

TOMÁŠ ABSOLON / MONET ON MY MIND

10.12.2014 - 16.01.2015

Fait Gallery Preview
Dominican Square 10, Brno
10/12/2014 – 16/1/2015
Opening: 9/12/2014 at 6pm
Curator: Martin Nytra

The main point of interest for Tomáš Absolon is a painting, which, in his concept, can be understood as an interface between depiction and abstraction. However, rather than this subtle line, the author devotes much more attention to work with visual shortcuts and means of painting, including the expression and gesture.

Absolon focuses on the relationship of the painting and reality, which the painting reproduces and also co-creates, and therefore Absolon understands it as a communication tool that uses its own language, but also as a specific kind of experience. This interest is also reflected in the use of a series of formal elements such as fragments and lines that work with both the viewer's visual memory, and with his psychology, creating a constant tension, which is caused by efforts to decipher these characters. In the works from recent years we can find the principle of gradual serial exploring the possibilities and limits of a rather narrowly defined repertoire of motifs, such as a repetitive composition scheme, or a similar way of working with painter’s gesture. At the same time this process is also part of a deeper awareness of their unmistakable characteristics and potential.

If we should describe Tomáš Absolon’s work in a certain context, we could include it into a broader discourse of referring to the specific conditions of the medium and its history. The basic set of elements, that the paintings work with, is partly based on an extensive fund of abstract painting. We could also mention the trends in contemporary art and reflect certain ideas taken out of the object-oriented ontology and theoretical thinking about the nature and functioning of various visual strategies of product design. Principles derived from these two areas and derived meanings are the first visible platform where there's a majority of their interpenetration, concurrence and contradictions with which the author works.

A particular importance in Absolon’s work occupies a specific opposite system of compositions, based on which there are, side by side, designed elements of a more technical nature in contact with colored valeurs, atmospheric effects and other impressions, which we could put in the category of symbols that represent a rather sensual and spiritual sphere, or are also often perceived as an expression of the artist's inner emotions. At the same time they are also known symbols and strategies that have found wider use across the whole spectrum of cultural production and therefore there is perhaps nothing else to do than to refer to them with appropriate distance and irony. And so the name of this exhibition could actually be a really successful slogan.

Martin Nytra

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