Lukáš Jasanský - Martin Polák / Sir's Hunting Ground

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.

Lukáš Jasanský - Martin Polák / Sir's Hunting Ground

01.06.2022 - 30.07.2022

Fait Gallery MEM, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno

Curator: Pavel Švec

Opening: 1. 6. 2022, 7 pm

“It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement, the greatest source of visual beauty, the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.“

David Attenborough

The acclaimed tandem active on the art scene for over three decades is renowned for their photographic cycles characterized by a high degree of realism. In a new series for the Fait Gallery, the work, of Jasanský and Polák including documentary and reportage photography, detailed studies of architecture, striking shots of nature and the Czech landscape as well as bold experiments with colour or fascinating and sophisticated abstract and geometrical compositions, is expanded with another distinctive photographic genre.

Wildlife photography is considered one of the most challenging disciplines of photography. It requires not only technical skills such as selecting the right exposure or precise focus but also a range of other specific skills and experience, for example, the ability to predict the behaviour of animals in their natural habitat or dexterity in hiding, camouflaging and approaching animals unnoticed. This genre also generally places more emphasis on the aesthetic value of the image than, say, journalistic or documentary photography. Animals are most often captured in action, for example fighting, hunting or moving. Lukáš Jasanský and Martin Polák, who have spent most of their lives in bustling urban agglomerations, set out with a similar ambition. In the current series, they examine the extent to which a given photographic canon can serve as a means of bringing us closer to nature and deepening our ties with its seemingly separate realm.

The essence of any healthy relationship should include the willingness to see things as they are, without expectations and bias, without stylistic pretensions and lofty ideas. And it is in this respect that the photographs of Jasanský and Polák can tell us a lot about the relationship between man and the inhabitants of wild nature. Like in their previous series, however, they do not make any straightforward judgements about the objects of their observation, leaving the meaning of their work largely open to the viewer's interpretation. When Jasanský and Polák enter "Sir's hunting ground," it does not necessarily mean that they leave their own. On the contrary, they remain faithful to their means and intentions. After all, faithfulness has always played a key role in their photographs.

Text: Pavel Švec

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