LUCIA SCERANKOVÁ / THE OLD LIGHT IN THE GALAXIES DEPARTMENT

A grid becomes a symbol of organisation in the most general sense of the word, a kind of order of things, and at a symbolic level also a world order.

- Jan Nálevka

The A4 format paper is the most widespread kind of paper in both households and offices. We use it to print ordinary documents, for photocopying, notes and sketches. It is also used for the printing of formal court decisions, meals of the day in cheap restaurants and university theses, as it is the only format with which one can be sure that the diploma work will be bound in covers imitating leather as late as an hour before the deadline. Files for this size are available from any stationery shop, and millions of sheets pile up in millions of metres of office archives. Text editors now offer the digital version of A4… The standardized A4 format is guaranteed by the ISO 216 international standard for paper of the A, B and C categories. The first attempts at standardisation go back to France during the Revolution in the late 18th century. The main advantage of this proportion of sides is the simple division in halves after which the sheets retain the same proportion of sides. The major benefit of the adoption and dissemination of the standard was its compatibility and coordination of the manufacture of a whole spectrum of products. Nowadays, when you ask someone to picture a “common sheet of paper”, they will most probably visualize paper of the A4 format.

When lining A4 sheets, Jan Nálevka adjusts the drawing to the standard. He opts for a neutral handwriting, and steps back as an artist. He uses blue ballpoint pens in order to emphasise office work where the compliance with prescribed administration procedures is essential. Reams of paper covered in lines and square grids are virtually indiscernible from mass-produced prints. And since Nálevka further segments the paper with lines and square grids, while in fact still preparing it for writing and drawing, he can talk about the creation of “standardised blankness”, a blankness achieved through work. Its volume, as well as the time it requires, are not proportionate to the result. However, in their reflection there is always space to realise the absurd nature of this activity. Nálevka’s drawings can thus be considered implicitly critical, yet at a more general level they are abstract visualizations of an order introduced into art, or into a work activity as such. And in its ultimate form, the segmented A4 paper format is a symbolic representative of standards predestining our factual possibilities, shaping our perception and behaviour, and providing a basis for our imagination in the private and social dimension of life.

The And now, finally, let’s finally turn the page exhibition can be understood as a public audit due to which the material that in the previous decade had progressively emerged at preliminary, autonomous and semi-autonomous presentations was gathered in a single place. And although the show exclusively presents drawings from the years 2009—2018, it captures Nálevka’s thinking concerning the external conditions of the organisation of human life. It is divided into three basic sections. The first one observes the subjects of the basic organisation plan and “standardised blankness” as the consequences of the adopted art-work load. In the second section, the issue of the time invested in the drawings, and lost, comes to the fore. Finally, in the last section Nálevka abandons the point of view of an individual and with plans drawn over reproductions of books on modernist art comments on the historical and possible future social orders.

LUCIA SCERANKOVÁ / THE OLD LIGHT IN THE GALAXIES DEPARTMENT

15.10.2014 - 05.12.2014

Fait Gallery PREVIEW
Dominican Square 10, Brno
15/10 – 5/12/2014
Opening: 14/10/2014 at 6pm
Curator: Martin Nytra

THE OLD LIGHT IN THE GALAXIES DEPARTMENT

The work of Lucie Sceranková is characterised by its emphasis on our perception of photography as a means of exploring the possible forms of reality. Despite, or may be just because of this approach, the reality seems to be relative, variable, or it‘s stable definitive form becomes unattainable. Rather than a print of the reality out of flesh and bones, photography acts today as a technology that creates an autonomous reality, that can do anything with the landscape of rocks and seas. Distinguishable, subjective "me" entered the picture and merged with it in a dream, in which version the world is only a plane of projection of fantasies.

The principal topics of photography, time and movement, are categories that despite the desire to penetrate into their essence only reveal in every next step the imperfection of any, even an intensive attempt for their absolute definition. The image about our own identity that, in comparison with the dimensions of the universe, becomes a subject of a significant disparity. This feature of her work with scale is one of the important means for Sceranková’s work, by which the author copes with her own experience of reality. She translates that into more broadly conceived themes to which the audience can relate through metaphorical depictions and a play with associations. However, it still leaves the audience plenty of space to search for their own interpretations. The personal experience is in the principle non-transferable, but it can be equated. The model, which creates specific conditions for the perception is therefore one of the other important points in the author's reflections about the nature of the world, that can be viewed only through schemes that put us into certain discursive and cultural contexts.

The image of Sceranková’s concept stands on the edge of the area and space where we are only able to recognise familiar and understandable forms, which we try to reach and attach to them as to the way in the belief that at the very end we will get the meaning. Clever work with archetypes and the surreal visions, that works with the psychology of the audience, eventually turns our attention to the reflection of visual culture and the traditional models for reading of the images and also current changes in the understanding of the subjective self in environments of archives of shared memory and language.

Martin Nytra

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