LUBOMÍR TYPLT / THEY WON'T ESCAPE FAR

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.

LUBOMÍR TYPLT / THEY WON'T ESCAPE FAR

21.09.2012 - 01.12.2012

Fait Gallery
Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Strret), Brno
21/9 – 1/12/2012
Opening: 20/9/2012 at 7 pm
Curator: Petr Vaňous

Lubomír Typlt proves that an image is a synthetic medium that can hardly ever by completely used up. Functional principle of a continuous renewal of this means of expression is put into communicating vessels of authorship and an era. An era requires images and evaluates them in terms of chronology. Authorship frees the works of art of a time line and breaks the space-time in a completely different way which can be described as cyclical or ritual. Therefore Lubomír Typlt can return back to figurative painting and recycle seemingly used up figuration without repeating himself in his paintings. He updates the figure but his act makes present, in a certain generalization, current feeling.

In the set of figurative paintings, Typlt works with an extreme dynamic nature of means of expression. Expressive abbreviation is gradated by diffusive emotional colorfulness. The author thematizes, it seems, primarily the laws of painting as such. Because what else is painting than an expressive grouping of colors. In exhibited works there are adolescent characters everywhere but they are mainly carriers of colorful spots rather than thematic references. The color models, gives the characters life, makes them visible. The color tells stories. It itself is a narrative medium which becomes independent and frees the figure of its role of literary server. Painting is an energy metaphorically translated into color sharpness and vibrancy of young bodies. Groups of people running against the horizon still acquire critical drive in the paintings. Waste of energies. Effort to stay in the running group. Absurd and meaningless changes of direction. Constant monitoring of terrain. Repetitive motion without beginning and without end. Running without rest. Also the age of figures conveys experience with socialization, integration into society. It is here where the first collectives full of cruelty and injustice arise. It is here where the characters are sown and modeled. In a game that is no longer childish, but not yet associated with full responsibility. Typlt generalizes the dividing-line between curiosity, uncouscious and awakening which can even have destructive character

The name of the exhibition, Dalekou neutečou / They won’t escape far mocks the simple defensive reaction of a child, who, by measuring the distance, measures the quality of security. We won’t be able to escape the image and painting, if they rise from their present. The sight of them is only for the strong ones. To stare into the face of futility is the first and necessary step to understanding our own inevitable mortality. There’s no other way.

Petr Vaňous

Go back