LUCIA SCERANKOVÁ / THE OLD LIGHT IN THE GALAXIES DEPARTMENT

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.

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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