Michal Škoda / Interweaving
22.05.2024 - 27.07.2024
Fait Gallery, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Curator: Silvia L. Čúzyová
Opening: 22nd May, 7 pm
Michal Škoda's representative exhibition entitled INTERWEAVING is not a retrospective but thematizes a constant creative dialogue with the past, present and the possible future of his work - a continuous intertwining of subjects, meanings, media and materials. It is also a continuation of a focused interaction with Places with Specific Qualities. Škoda consistently works with a reduced abstract form and realises his subjects – an interest in space and architecture, a place for the human, archiving of existence and everyday life - through a variety of techniques. Drawing is one of the main means of expression in his work, along with artist’s books, and in recent years his sculptural nature has re-emerged in objects that work, to some extent, with architectural morphology. While the large-scale drawings and objects are essential and highly abstracted works, their imaginary counterparts involve Škoda's diaries and so-called Records, where he maps his everyday life through immediate drawing and photographic records. It is literally an archive of the artist's existence where countless stimuli take place, even those seemingly different from what he represents.
Diaries and Records are two series from Škoda's rich output in the field of artist’s books developed since the 1990s. Diaries represent a more traditional form of hand-bound notebooks with classic pagination. Each exists in a single copy. They have a chronological character and are numbered according to the order of their creation. The extensive collection of diaries is based on original black and white photography with artistic interventions in various techniques. Photography appeared in Škoda's work in 1996 as part of his first book, Places. Over the following decades its form matured and evolved through a multitude of visualizations and photographic records. The textual component is absent in the diaries and it is not clear whether it is possible to "read" them in a linear way. However, they clearly show what interests the artist, what catches his eye and engages his mind. The diaries are the artist's private field of experimentation, a reservoir of inspiration and ideas. The images follow one by one as if from a dictionary of Škoda's perception: structures and grids, found architectural situations, details, accents, horizons and vistas - inconspicuous but formative moments of existence, subtle contemplative beauty. The artist's ability to generate image after image in flawless composition is fascinating. The positioning of images on the pages is highly important, and perforations appear as physical intersections into the world of the following pages.
Records, as Michal Škoda calls his mixed-media drawings on A4 paper, are primary messages in the simplest of ways, "continuous touches" - a dialogue with the everyday reality and the result of countless hours over a sheet of paper when concentrated work in the studio takes on meditative dimensions. Elementary visual units indicate the inner constellation of more complex images and reveal Škoda's creative process. For these records, the artist uses the techniques of drawing, pen drawing, painting and collage, adding pieces of time-relevant reality such as photographs, frottage, fragments of various printed materials, ground plans, etc. He still works with inscriptions (more precisely with words) and typographic compositions, albrot to a much lesser extent than in the past. The specific character of Records lies in the fact that the individual sheets are not bound, and can be selected and used to intervene in space, thus presenting a simple and at the same time eccentric form of an artist’s book. It was impossible to resist the distinctive character of the Fait Gallery in Brno and not to attempt a creative confrontation of a magnificent industrial space with A4 drawings and records. Hundreds of pieces of Records placed in succession, as they were created, make up a unique whole of an enormous picture and reflect Škoda's intense analysis of space and its potential, "space as a phenomenon and an infinite territory of subjects."
Mia Milgrom / Mining the Undersense
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Fait Gallery PREVIEW, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Curator: Pavla Sceranková
Opening: 24th May, 7 pm
ELLIPSE the first sign of pressure on a ring and the defence of deformations.[1]
Iron is formed inside stars as the last element that can originate in this way. Its presence in the nucleus of a star will eventually cause a gravitational collapse and a supernova explosion, which will scatter it and the other elements into space. It is the same iron that then becomes part of the organometallic compound of haemoglobin, which plays a key part in the transport of oxygen from the lungs to the body's tissues and is therefore essential for breathing.[2] Despite the immense distance between a supernova explosion and respiration, they are partly conditioned by the same element. The complex interconnectedness of the events around us can cause anxiety and amazement at the same time. Mia Milgrom reflectson it intuitively and as if unconsciously through her passion for the material.
The starting point of the exhibition was an interest in "the language of tension that arises in disturbed situations"[3] Mia observes these from the perspective of a geologist who can glimpse into "the system, the support structure that maintains the local equilibrium... layers of organic deposits alternate with human footprints and objects that accumulate and gradually decompose, seeping down into deeper layers and contaminating the soil".[4]
The exhibition consists of minimalist situations that are spatial metaphors for the support structure just before the fall, equilibrium maintained by a defective component. Although they are all predominantly made of iron, it is the details of the joints that draw attention to themselves. At first glance, the embedded wooden or ceramic parts are an illogical weakening of the structure. The unsustainability of the systems we live in is another thing Mia is thinking about. The whole, however, is not weakened by the material of the joints; it only starts to fall apart when we want to organise it, explain it, control it. "By creating nonsensical moments, we may approach narratives that offer non-linear recourses.“[5]
It takes calmness and inner peace to perceive the potential of the non-linear recourses that promise relief. We spin in circles. We sense a way out of exhaustion, but we are too tired to reach for it. Mia lends us a hand in the form of a bump that disrupts the expected trajectory of movement. A sculpture is a thing that acts. The action is initiated by its physical presence; the action itself happens elsewhere. I am drawn into the exhibition space by a steel shape wedged between the ceiling and the floor. It raises an unspoken question. Is it an ellipse that fits precisely in the gap between the ceiling and the floor, or is it a circle deformed by the pressure of the ceiling? I am aware of the question, but the answer is irrelevant. Thoughts are distracted by viewing the embedded segments. I stick with them.
The distorted trajectory of an ellipse reminds me of a combination of words from the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed: to be more.[6] It stands as a call for emancipation, an opposition to the imperative: you are less. Words derived from Freire's complex analysis appear a bit awkward in this way. I ask how to be more; how to want less; how to want less so that I can be more? I return to the embedded segments. My thoughts get blurred, as if their presence was an obstacle. I get used to the feeling and start to enjoy it. I think of Jane Bennett. In her essay The Force of Things, she writes: "Perhaps the very idea of the force of things and living matter asks too much of us: to know more than it is possible to know."[7] In an essay that discusses, among other things, the similarities between Adorno's non-identity and the force of things, between "concrete materialism" and vital materialism, she mentions in a footnote Roman Coles's interpretation of Adorno's concept of non-identity. As Roman Coles writes of Adorno, "objects are not captured by concepts completely, and thus life will always defy our knowledge and control. The negative dialectic is a 'morality of thought' that nurtures generosity towards others and towards non-identity in the self.“[8]
To want less, to be more, to find a way to alleviate the suffering caused by trying to control all things.
[1] PADRTA, Jiří. Pracovat v souladu s kosmem a živly. In: KUJELOVÁ, Denisa, ed. Karel Malich & utopické projekty / Karel Malich & Utopian Projects. Brno: Fait Gallery, 2021, p. 23. ISBN 978-80-908446-0-5.
[2] Železo. In: Wikipedia: the free encyclopedia [online]. San Francisco (CA): Wikimedia Foundation, 2001- [cit. 2023-04-25]. Accessed from: https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%BDelezo#
[3] Mia Milgrom, exhibition concept.
[4] Ibidem.
[5] Ibidem.
[6] FREIRE, Paulo. Pedagogika utlačovaných. Prague: Neklid, 2022. ISBN 978-80-908247-9-9.
[7] BENNET, Jane, Síla věcí, p. 122. In: JANOŠČÍK, Václav, LIKAVČAN, Lukáš and Jiří RŮŽIČKA, ed. Mysl v terénu: filosofický realismus v 21. století. Prague: Akademie výtvarných umění v Praze, Displey, 2017. ISBN 978-80-87108-72-7.
[8] BENNET, Jane, Síla věcí, p. 123. In: JANOŠČÍK, Václav, LIKAVČAN, Lukáš and Jiří RŮŽIČKA, ed. Mysl v terénu: filosofický realismus v 21. století. Prague: Akademie výtvarných umění v Praze, Displey, 2017. ISBN 978-80-87108-72-7.
