KAMILA MUSILOVÁ / UNDER THE DOILY WITH A DELICATE TEXTURE

In my past lives, I was a hunter and a gatherer. I would always start my everyday routine
with decorating tools, weapons and creating musical instruments for myself.
 
1) Even though you were considered as the creator of spatial objects, in this exhibition your major emphasis is on paintings. What was the impulse?

The new atelier, where for the first time in my life, is light, space and warmth, this helped me to finally start painting. An eternity of horizons was open in front of me, together with two big travels to Columbia and Australia, I understand this happy season as staying on an abandoned island, therefore the name "Two years’ vacation".
 
2) In 2004 you painted large format canvases "Roads of swifts" and "Mother Earth". In the sametime frame you also painted "Chaple of Karlin", and even before that, "Envelopes" were created, therefore in your own way you are continuing with something that was created long before?  

Of course, I was already painting in the '70s during my studies. Back then I inherited very rare pigments from prof. Slánský, which I am using presently. The first time I used them was during my exhibition in Rudolfinum, when there was a need to paint something great for "Silent Hall" and a figure of the central deity arose, which is appearing in my works in different varieties. Connection with the material was always important for me. The type of work on the ground on the non-gesso canvas, together with water diluted pigments and acrylate bonds demanded this physical contact. Even in some places on the paintings, there are my footprints.

A wall painting "Chaple of Karlin" was in somewhat a cleansing exhibition after the floods in 2002, and according to an agreement I had to turn it white. The oldest envelopes date back to 1986. The style of their decoration is connected with the style of "Third rococo" and that epoch is accumulated in my works. In the '90s I created multiple large format envelopes, which I perceived as the object/pictures having multiple-meanings and it opened an inexhaustible line packed into certain cushions, similar to guitars. This is related to my favourite non-standard formats (ovals) and adjusting large canvasses "free" without the stretcher bar.
 
3) What was most interesting thing about Australia? 

First of all never ending space and starry skies. Five weeks, every evening by the fire in the desert. Furthermore, colours and rock paintings as old as 60 000 years. This was the first time I have seen baobabs and eucalypti that were 800 years old, which existed way before the arrival of whites... breathtaking scenery. I brought back a lot of collected materials and natural clay, with which I am painting. Australians have a "story" for each god, they are mostly cautionary stories, which have helped to keep the tribes viable. It appears to me as there are various imaginary divinities, however, they were born from the transcultural backdrop. Something interesting is that the rock paintings and figures on it are very similar all around the world, but I am not the type who would study these things in much detail. On the other hand, I deliberately keep certain blindness, to be astonished, and I would recommend this to consumers. Those who ask too much will learn too much.

4) Some rusty images look a bit apocalyptic, did it have any specific impulse?

"Rusty images" are painted by some rusty mud from a forested swamp in West Czech. In fact, they are ferric nano-shells of microorganisms. I discovered this beautiful colour in the '70s, which came back to me now, to extract it artistically. Thematically, they partly follow the cycle of thermo-drawings "Landscapes from Timelessness" or the cycle of graphics "Giants", where the power of nature is personified into supernatural beings. People desire to witness a miracle or other paranormal acts, and we have this advantage that we can also paint them. Also, people are drawn to the aesthetic of natural disasters and the theatre of extinction. Towards the end however, the road took me elsewhere.
 
5) When you were in Columbia, did you try yagé -the most renowned shamanic hallucinogen?

I don’t need to check what I suspect. I don't need to meet God. I don't want to upset him. He
could stop passing me.
 
The interview led Miroslav Ambroz

KAMILA MUSILOVÁ / UNDER THE DOILY WITH A DELICATE TEXTURE

08.02.2013 - 27.03.2013

Fait Gallery MEM & Fait Gallery PREVIEW
Božetěchova Street 1, Brno, Dominican Square 10, Brno
8/2 – 27/3/2013
Opening: 7/2/2013 at 7pm
Curator: Denisa Kujelová

The present projects by Kamila Musilová were realized especially within the medium of photography. Already here, however, appears her interest in other techniques in the processing of particular topics. It is mostly about the principle of “temporary installation” with the help of which the author intuitively creates new relationships between objects and their meaning and specific places. These objects are then transformed in space with the help of photography.

In the gallery MEM, Kamila Musilová steps out of the framework of a two dimensional image and presents a collection of objects and installations created specifically for this space. The exhibition title Under the doily with a delicate texture, that is borrowed from the convolute of the Cottager Church called The Book of cottages, is supposed to evoke the nostalgia associated with elapsed time. Kamila Musilová so indirectly refers to her own sentimental relationship with her grandparents and family in general, rooted family traditions and stereotypes, not always sweet memories which she tries to generalize from the intimate level to well known experience of us all. Doily as a bearer of stiffness, precision, order and peace and quiet at home semantically cuts through almost all exhibited works, whether in a form of an oversized wooden fence or as a flow of floating carpet fringes. Used ready-made objects from grandfather’s workshop refer to the thin line between do-it-yourself, unskillfulness and artistic creation. Substitution of surprising object dimensions (too big or too small) suggests a shift of the original meaning of things into an absurd level.

The whole exposition is overseen by the double portrait of Valentina Tereshkova and Yuriy Gagarin, the first “couple” in space, who are metaphorically seen by Musilová as futuristic parents of human race. The technical processing but rather evokes old wedding portraits hung above beds in bedrooms.
The second part of the exhibition located in the gallery Preview naturally follows and completes the spatial exhibition of the first part. Besides the photos of the older cycle Grandfather and Grandmother the artist installs video as well, whose individual footage takes place in various parts of the garden and the cottage of grandparents. These are static shots of real state of things, but by separating particular scenes there is a strange story about the life of local things and people.

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