RICHARD ŠTIPL / SENSE OF AN END

In the exhibition project of the versatile visual artist Petr Nikl, his creative approaches intertwine in a vast imaginative garden - a kind of ecosystem of moving and seemingly static organisms cultivated by the artist, but at the same time partially self-grown, much to his delight.

Petr Nikl is one of the few Czech artists who need little introduction to the cultural public. Almost everyone will remember some of his exhibitions, a painting, drawing or print, an exhibition project he initiated, a music recording, a concert, a theatre play or a performance or, for example, a book for adults and children he wrote and illustrated. However, it is not this multi-faceted and decades-long presence of Petr Nikl in our cultural space that makes him an unmistakeable and a rather unique figure. Indeed, this presence would not be worth talking about and would be just mindless hyperactivity were it not characterized by the imaginative poetics with which the artist draws us into a fascinating space of fantasy and play.

If we were to sum up what Nikl communicates to his viewers and listeners, it would probably be a non-violently subversive impact on the consensus of dignified and pragmatic adulthood which creates a wall of restrictions and a hard-to-fulfil desire to break it, and Nikl's ability to indicate, through the outcomes of his work, a path towards the fuller experiencing of the multi-layered and mysterious nature of existence that spreads underneath the veneer of the mundane and the superficial absorption of reality.

Nikl co-founded his puppet theatre company Mehedaha as early as 1985. At that time, he was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague where intermedia fusions or performative forms in visual art were not discussed and taught. In accordance with the ideas of the cultural nomenclature of the period about clearly defined fields for the individual artistic disciplines, they were not even considered potentially enriching.However, he soon found kindred spirits among the members of the Tvrdohlaví art group which made its first public appearance in 1987, with understanding not only for artistic activity but also for self-realization in music and theatre. Yet only in Nikl’s case involving the wide spectrum of image, sound, language and body did it become the basis of all creative activities.

Like the performances of Nikl's plays where his visual sensitivity is strongly applied, many of his art projects are determined by the performative and procedural aspects of art. This is by no means limited to paintings which are executed by mechanical machines with the artist's assistance, often in the presence of the audience. This is also true, for example, of his recent works on paper in which he explores new possibilities by dipping rolls of paper in paint in anticipation of (again) only partially predictable results. Randomness and spontaneity help the artist to cross the horizon of his own imagination and provide him with the possibility of wonder at the resulting image. They are not far from Nikl’s drawing method in which his skill taps unconscious sources and the drawing is thus "let" grow out of contents which otherwise remain inaccessible. In them, too, Nikl is merely a participant who does not have a hundred-percent control over what kind of treasure his mind and hands will bring.

The exhibition in the Fait Gallery is rooted in the metaphor of a flower bed. While a garden is associated with a branching cultural symbolism, the flower bed as its sub-component is only a kind of working subject. Under normal circumstances it is cultivated and maintained in a state where it serves well the greater whole or a given purpose which, depending on the intentions of the grower, is either ornamental or utilitarian. A flower bed that is not weeded and consequently wild is a sign of neglect, while care is characterized by a high degree of restriction and control over what can take place in this demarcated area. In contrast, Peter Nikl lets his imaginary flower beds overgrow in anticipation of the unsuspected and surprising. For him, they are not what he carefully prepares and then follows a plan but a combined activity of plants, soil, sunshine, rain, insects, earthworms, moles and other elements that enter into the process. The flower beds - not dissimilar to stretched canvases or sheets of paper because of their limits - are thus filled with actions that we can only partially observe. And anticipate even less.

Thanks to this, they can turn into fascinating revelations which, through their self-organization and somewhat "disorganized organization" take us beyond (or "under") an objective and clear understanding of reality, to its massive organicity and complexity that is never fully graspable. And yet, this "big" takes place in the encounter with something as "small"... as a flower bed, a drawing or a painted image.

Text: Jiří Ptáček

RICHARD ŠTIPL / SENSE OF AN END

21.09.2012 - 27.10.2012

Fait Gallery MEM
Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Street), Brno
21/9 – 27/10/2012
Opening: 20/9/2012 at 7pm
Curator: Petr Vaňous

Richard Stipl’s work is primarily fulfilling of critical relationship to the genre and what it represents. Genres are not viewed from a distance, with no contact, from a safe distance, but to the contrary. The author himself puts on a mask of a genre to be able to play on of the selected roles. The important thing is to get inside the problem, to places where the first moments of narration occur, the first words of narration, to places where the dead matter changes in subjects and bodies, where it can communicate something.

History of art studied the human body literally from all sides. What else is left to exploit from it today? Probably the same thing, but in a different way. It will not be the cult of physicality, titanic strength and health anymore. It will not even be erotic attraction or metaphor of divinity, the healthy spirit in a healthy body. This version is heretically rejected by Stipl and exacerbates physicality in a different direction, toward repulsion. He explores the expressive range of the face. Anywhere from resting state to states of exaltation and aggression. Gesture deforms. It changes the composition of matter, shortens or lengthens physiognomy, caricatures all seriousness, transforming the face into grimace. There is something very conniving here. Transformation of a human into some kind of a puppet, in a silent actor, in a sad clown or a circus clown. The sadness is multiplied when the composition of bold human dummies executes an ugly ritual. When the limbs are being shortened, the viscera are being exposed and there is blood everywhere. Nudity is not attractive. In the case of Richard Stipl, it is scary. The parody of the genre in put into details, not only in gestures. Head devoid of hair and eyebrows has elongated hybrid eyelashes, sometimes even braided into dreadlocks (Stigma). Elsewhere, the author does not hesitate to separate the head and arms and make them into independent totem-like elements (Ruce), or to place on the head of a statue real denture. Naturalism of most statues stems from used materials: wax and surface polychrome. The author seeks by all means to ensure that the statue does not serve the myth. The more it is obvious the evocation of the fact that it’s impossible to escape from the myth and that we still remain its hostages. Its persistent echoes are seeping through everywhere. It only reveals its reverse, dark side. The mere gesture of closed eyes remains forever full of mysteries and secrets.

If this exhibition is called Pocit konce / Sense of an End, then let’s imagine this “end” more like a repetitive and never-ending Promethean ritual. Recurrent pain, followed by recurrent relief. The desire for definitive death that will never be fulfilled. Genre is breaking down on metaphor. The metaphor is not the death of the genre, even if we wished it thousand times. It is impossible to start again from zero.

Petr Vaňous

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