the little infinity

Marian Palla

 
Matter in Eternity

Habima Fuchs



Marian Palla / the little infinity

21.02.2024 - 04.05.2024

Fait Gallery, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno

Curators: Denisa Kujelová a Vít Havránek

Opening: 21st February, 7 pm

 

To create a picture using earth from a Moravian orchard is to abandon the modernist tradition of expressionism, fauvism, impressionism, and also what preceded them. For someone who doesn't paint every day, such a decision may seem easy. But it isn’t, as both the painter and the picture lose the joy of a brush sweeping across the palette and canvas, as well as the effects conveyed by colour. For curators and the visitors, the earth pictures, one of which gave the exhibition its title, are a gateway to the most extensive display of Marian Palla's work to date. We enter Palla's oeuvre from roughly the centre of its material sediment, literally crashing, like country schoolmasters, into the middle of a giant molehill. Because, in keeping with the artist's programme, this is neither a complete nor a scholarly retrospective but typically, or occasionally, a taxonomic (exploring the species diversity of the artefacts) and random show.

Palla's very first participation in a public presentation of young Brno artists (1971) grabbed the attention of Jiří Valoch, for whom the Nature picture was "something different at first sight".[1]. This event led to their acquaintance and Palla became an active member and a driving force behind the now-legendary[2] Brno circle. His studio in Kotlářská Street provided the space for countless meetings, debates, studio exhibitions and performances by invited guests. The distinctiveness that had enchanted Valoch was not only visible against the backdrop of the conformist art of the time, it also characterised Palla's work within the Brno circle. It centred around two opposites, seriousness resulting from the experience of land art and drawing performances (I existed in this painting for two days and ate 7,799 grains of rice, 24 hours, Journey to a touch, Drawings with tea, etc.), and humour, or more precisely, naivety, constantly present from the earliest paintings (My parents, Nature, etc.).

Palla actually describes himself as a naive conceptualist.[3] The starting point for this conceptualism was not Duchamp nor his idiosyncratic interpreter Kossuth, but rather Magritte's painting This is not a pipe. The language, idea and definition of art around which the interest of Anglo-American conceptual artists gravitates has its roots in Palla’s work in fiction, poetry, and increasingly in Zen spirituality. Humour, naivety, self-criticism, empirical observation, description of obvious facts, absurd questions, paradoxes, the great subjects of the philosophy of life. We find all this condensed in every single one of Palla's poems, objects, pictures which are created because the artist wants to "experience intensely" but at the same time "to do things without purpose". Art and Zen practice mutually intertwine.

The concept of abandoning modernity mentioned in the introduction (with the exception of conceptual art) was employed by the artist to move through the history that far predates it. He could view the manifestations of the zeitgeist and modernity with the hearty kindness of a caveman, and painting with sticks or body parts, Neolithic pottery, imprinting and other prehistoric practices hold a prominent place in his work. Perhaps due to his pre-modern perspective, his work naturally constituted itself from the positions of interspeciesism and radical sustainability topical today. He arrived at it not by reading Bruno Latour but through a concentrated meditation on the reality that surrounds him.

For that matter, even the essay Against Interpretation[4] relevant today draws attention to the simplification (undoubtedly related to conceptual art) committed by art theory when it forgets the qualities that arise in primary sensory perception and assesses the value of an artwork only through interpretation. Sontag notes the "experience of something mystical, magical" that the prehistoric creature had in the Lascaux cave. Palla's conceptualism was aware of the brain's one-sidedness and involved body parts and nature in creating art. Projecting the ideal of enchantment into a remote French cave, as the New York theorist did, was not an option for Palla; in contrast, he demonstrates that it can be experienced by anyone in their surroundings. In his case, also between cities, Brno, a country house with a yard and animals, and cosmic nature.

Note, for example, that the Spoilt picture, Crack and other works by Palla owe their existence to the correction of the insight into the meaning of error; the error of artistic skill or material in the creative process. The consistent concept of doing things without purpose directs the artist not to exclude error, awkwardness, displeasure, or any other option based on the outcome. It grants each variation a potential for intense experience, its own inherent and healing beauty. This may seem a serious error of judgment, a naivety in a society organised around the pragmatic pursuit of success and profit. But once the crack opens, the beauty of error and ruining starts working, as a source of therapy of the imaginary common sense.
 
T: Vít Havránek
 
 
 

[1] VALOCH, Jiří. Marian Palla: Ticho, čekání a dech (kat. výst.). Galerie Na bidýlku, Brno, December 1987.

[2] Let us note here the publications and exhibitions of Barbora Klímová, long-term research of Jana Písaříková and Ondřej Chrobák of the Jiří Valoch Archive in the MG in Brno, the similarly focused research of Helena Musilová, the catalogues of the works of Vladimír Ambroz (Tomáš Pospiszyl), ČS koncept 70. let by Denisa Kujelová (ed.), Akční umění by Pavlína Morganová, etc.

[3] Marian Palla, Naivní konceptualista a slepice,2014.

[4] Susan Sontag, „Against Interpretation." In Against Interpretation and Other Essays, 1966.



Nika Kupyrova / No More Mr Nice Guy

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Fait Gallery PREVIEW, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
 
Opening: 17. 10. 2018 at 19:00
 
Curator: Václav Janoščík
 
Art projects by Nika Kupyrova don’t have a unifying or stable meaning; instead, they open before us an opulent universe of materials, objects, references and languages.
At the current exhibition the artist makes use of a series of sci-fi novels by Iain M. Banks taking place in a futuristic civilisation known as The Culture, and of his symbolic or ironic names of starships that are in fact living creatures. We can observe works and objects that use their names as a process of creation, control and manipulation of meaning and sense. The artist draws us into suspense between the comprehensible and the unclear, an object and an artefact, the human and the extraterrestrial, between signs and surfaces, truth and fiction, the present and the future.
Such is the role of aesthetics, from Immanuel Kant to Iain M. Banks. We must constantly change and find new forms and languages enabling us to see more than just these dichotomies; we might discover affects and details deeper under the surface of phrases and ideas - and possibly also beauty.
 
"Serious Callers Only"
 
I am Václav and you, you are called Nika. When I was little I was quite dissatisfied with my own name; it seemed too conservative. The Czech national patron is Václav and so are the two Czech presidents after 1989. 
 
My name is exclusively used in the Czech cultural context and is basically impossible to pronounce or substitute in other languages. And your name – Nika – immediately brings up an association with Eastern Europe to me.
 
We are all being called callers, but we ourselves are the callers. We use names to comprehend the world, we cover things up with words to create or solidify their meaning.                
 
“No More Mr Nice Guy”
 
The problems get even deeper if you come to be labeled not only by you real name but a nickname or a metaphorical expression. Let’s say you are being called “Mr Nice Guy”.
 
In folk psychology and these self-help manuals this stands for being overly helpful and positive, always trying to avoid conflict and resorting to a compromise or a consensus. 
 
"Kiss My Ass"
 
Sounds pretty fine at first, but involves a lifelong problem, believe me. While we usually accept the whole idea of democracy rooted in tolerance and in seeking consensus, sometimes you have to decide for yourself.
 
Sometimes you must simply step out and act against the odds. Sometimes you might need to swear and tell to "kiss my ass". I mean – so much for subtlety. Sometimes you must fight for your name.
 
"So Much For Subtlety"
 
Don’t worry, I don’t mean to imply any sort of chauvinism, machoism, egoism, resentment or indifference. The opposite is the case. Even if we fight [fait] for emancipation, for feminism and equal rights, we should take names seriously.
 
E-mancipare – means “to step out” in Latin. You see – no more Mr Nice Guy. It means to use your voice and claim your own name, a banner to fight with. So don’t worry – of course we still love you.
 
"Of Course I Still Love You"
 
Speaking of love. I always have this restless feeling. Sometimes I cannot help but simply love you. To crave your presence, words and sometimes even touches.
 
And I wake up. Still called the same. And I have to confront this limit to my aspiration in life, with my civil and somehow boring name. An awkward fact or a situation I would like to disregard.
 
“A True Disregard For Awkward Facts"
 
This is the game we call naming. Yes, indeed – giving a name can be a thrilling, lavish procedure. It might not just give you an account of what or who someone is. It might also trigger a narrative, a perspective; a joke, pun or a twist.
 
Frankly speaking, and finally explaining our little game with names – we refer to Iain M. Banks and his series of sci-fi novels based in The Culture. Where every piece of spacecraft is an actual sentient being, endowed with their own witty name. 
 
"Nervous Energy"
 
The point being – it’s not just about us; it’s not just the fucking humans who matter. It’s the animals, the fictions, the world itself or a spaceship that can be brought to life, soaked with meaning and endowed with a name.
 
Paradoxically enough this super-anthropocentric phenomenon of giving names can present a process through which we do away with human self-centeredness. A process through which we are getting closer to the nervous energy of art and things.
 

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