KAMILA MUSILOVÁ / UNDER THE DOILY WITH A DELICATE TEXTURE

“I am sure, that there are correlations in the world, the sound is connected to the visual and also the visual doesn’t exist without the acoustic.”

Milan Grygar has been exploring the specific concept of relations between visual and acoustic in very diverse and often contradictory parallels for more than five decades. The fact that in the context of the Czech art scene Grygar is absolutely remarkable, is influenced by his interest in experimental music and the follow up of the development of international inter media tendencies based in the contemporary avant-garde music (beside the system of free atonality of Arnold Schoenberg, we can mention the Notation of New Music by Erhard Karkoschka and the aleatoric concept of John Cage).

With regard to other artists experimenting with the new music and its alternative graphic notations, Grygar`s work was defined mainly by the possibility of correlations of acoustic and visual components which determine each other. In the case of Milan Grygar, sound is not tied to the artwork just by associations based on synesthesia (however it is possible to think about his work in this way, without any interpretative framework) and it is also not a completely autonomous element. It is a completely unique principle in art, when the acoustic perception gets a fuller emphasis when creating the artwork in such a sophisticated way that the picture becomes actually retrospectively an instruction, a transcription of how to read it once more, but on the acoustic level this time.

By trying to clarify the process itself and the direction of motion, he additionally discovered (with the help of tape and video recording) the hidden potential of this twofold connection. This dual dimensionality of visual and acoustic he later completed with the actual recording of the work process. He connected all three levels through mutual time unity and to a simple visual expressive power of the art piece. He, thanks to the sound, added the possibility to define the space and by adding the option to also record the process at the time.

The phenomenon of sound has permanently been present in Grygar’s art work since the mid-60s, when the artist, after focusing fully on the medium of drawing, systematically started to examine it and to record it. The sound, at the beginning defined by a series of individual strokes issued by specific instruments, became an unusual parabola to the visual rhythm. After a series of drawings and paintings with wooden sticks, and acoustic drawings, with the help of other typical tools, he developed polyphonic possibilities of drawing gestures, especially with the help of mechanical self-propelled machines. For those living drawings, as well as in other drawings with a performative character, especially tactile, there is a huge influence of the chance, which, while probably trying for the closest connection of visual and audio elements, he replaces his own will by more objective, not dependent factors. However, the element of presumptive chance is firmly controlled and determined by the artist himself.

In consequent repetition of drawn syntactic formula of the square grid in other types of drawings so called audiplastic and black and white and white and black canvases with linear grids, the sound is shown in different ways, that violate the monotony of structure either by a change of the rhythm, colour or by adding some other drawing element. The acoustic quality of Grygar‘s drawings within modern musical notation is more noticeable in his ranks of formulas and scores. These were, no doubt, created with the idea of a specific audio result. The possibility of interpretation is also open and the presence of the artist at the musical interpretations is absolutely vital.

After more than twenty years, the artist returned to painting a series of black paintings with colored linear elements based on the contrast of monochrome surfaces and sharp, complementarily coloured lines of fixed light.The very large and also very diverse series of Antiphons is created by minimalistic geometrical shapes and subtle lines, which are gradually accentuated with colour. However, the use of bold colours can be dated back to the 60s when the artist created the original models for Spatial scores that were produced in monumental scale almost half-century later. A radical shift occurs in the newest work, where Milan Grygar steps back from the variety of colour and returns to the using of a piece of wood to create a series of large scale drawings and paintings.

T: Denisa Kujelová

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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