RADIM LANGER / THE VALLEY OF THE FLIES

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

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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