RADIM LANGER / THE VALLEY OF THE FLIES

Even today, we still tend to understand a picture as an autonomous entity, a unique, final object which has a life of its own and naturally separates itself from the whole of the world. For that matter, we have spent a long time pursuing this, so it’s all good! However, there exists a close link between picture and word, including the inner ones. They belong to each other by their very nature, yet we seldom stress that the connection should be direct and, especially, generally accessible so that everybody can go through the same gateway. Then, however, there come moments when a picture communicates nothing but solidarity, shared being and one existence when the picture itself not only moves between horizons and transcends them but it is also absorbed by reality. This fully applies to Petr Veselý’s pictures. Their objectivity involves not only the time dimension but also a transcendental one.

Ernst Gombrich writes in his reflection on illusion that the power of interpretation can’t be overestimated, mentioning J. M. W. Turner whom he views as somebody who deliberately and in favour of what he sees suppresses all he knows about the world.[1] Both are also relevant today, as we are moving on the same border of discernibility. Petr, however, turns not to what he can see but to what he can touch.

The moment of touch is magical, a touch has the power to take life and also to restore it. The laying of hands is an ancient ritual, hands radiate warmth and coolness, recognise, and in some cases also heal. The essence is always the same: the expression of craving for the original, the real, for what is genuine and to what we, at least imaginarily, return. Gombrich does that himself when talking about abstracted forms as a phenomenon of western visual culture which is certainly remarkable yet fatefully lacking any assessment rules. In Petr’s case, however, we move on the opposite side of the spectrum; a picture is an abstract, grey form, yet it is permanently striving at figuration, or evolves from it. At the sane time, what is abandoned calls for attention which is equally reversible, and the movement we perform during its recognition is thus cyclic and without memory. Echoes of objectivity are secondary, yet they have rules – and these manifest themselves in this way.

Petr’s work is about constants which regularly come to the fore. This regards both his poetry and what can be termed the natural life of things. As in a truly home environment things do not just appear but exist, they meander in forms and functions and their being has an order which also involves decline, so they are like this in the artist’s pictures, or rather, his pictures are like that. They show what a close link there is between them and the world if we deliberately insert them in the framework of our existence. Matter captivates.

Petr is aware of this, of course, otherwise he wouldn’t put so much effort into the bridging of the gap between reality and its image, between what has come to pass and what we expect. He also likes to enter this space, shaping it and summarizing it. Medieval altars in museums are the relics of other autonomous worlds, and the objects of the ordinary world devoid of their function are also like that. Naturally, this is an expression of reduction, but also concentration and (controlled) absence which, paradoxically, grows stable in its loss and thus resonates all the more its original function and talent.[2] A hand frozen in motion, a shirt stretched in its bend moving from the field to the picture and beyond expresses this perfectly. As Ivan Blecha writes, “a reflection that the restricted position of the observer (…) leads to a restricted presentation of a thing is wrong and the statement about the necessary non-representationality of some aspects of reality, about its permanent distortion, is in fact unreasoned extrapolation.“[3] A picture is often the only thing left of something that once existed. It is a notch of a knife in a cupboard.

^{^[1]}E. H. Gombrich. Umění a iluze. Studie o psychologii obrazového znázorňování. Praha 2019, p. 235.

^{^[2]} In the last decades the formative task and nature of “things” has also been resumed by the western philosophical tradition, namely by Bruno Latour and object-oriented ontology (OOO).

^{^[3]}Ivan Blecha. Prostory zjevnosti. Dílo ve struktuře světa. Zlín 2018, p. 129.

RADIM LANGER / THE VALLEY OF THE FLIES

18.09.2013 - 08.11.2013

Fait Gallery PREVIEW
Dominican Square 10, Brno
18/9 – 8/11/2013
Opening: 17/9/2013 at 6pm
Curator: Martin Nytra

He had seen a similar chipper at an engineering products exhibition. Not long after that a distant friend of his ordered one device from him. The idea was not his though, but in the case of non-patented items of a mechanical nature self-replication is very common. You just reconstruct the ideas taken from others with your own interpretation. He got cheaper components and materials, than those from the supposedly original device, and began to combine the individual parts. During the first week his garage kept filling with acrid smoke from burnt welding wires and that was consequently replaced by the scream of the grinding machine and it’s fireworks of flaming sparks. All remaining work was related to the mechanical parts, connecting of the engine and the cables and the pouring of oil to the piston that drives a set of sharp chopping wedges. The most difficult to source is the electromotor, thanks to which these pieces of iron frame and thick metal plate are able to cut fifty centimeter long wooden logs into small chips. When turning the switch on the only duty of the chipper operator is to lay pieces of wood on the beveled slide, where, with a twitching action, they roll down to the knife blades, which perform penetrative and short intermittent mechanical movements. The chipped material then falls out into the prepared rubbish basket. Any aesthetic thoughts are of no consequence, so even the coats of grey and red paint must be attributed to the anticorrosion function, not to the refined taste of the eye. The whole thing can be folded to a more economical form and can be moved and carried on its rubber wheels. As with many other machines he previously constructed, he documented this one from many different angles and detailed positions. He uses these photographs later for future orders of the same type of machine, so he could rebuilt again, often with small improving deviations or changes in dimensions.

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