THE FRAGMENTS OF SETS / THE SELECTION FROM THE FAIT GALLERY COLLECTION

In my past lives, I was a hunter and a gatherer. I would always start my everyday routine
with decorating tools, weapons and creating musical instruments for myself.
 
1) Even though you were considered as the creator of spatial objects, in this exhibition your major emphasis is on paintings. What was the impulse?

The new atelier, where for the first time in my life, is light, space and warmth, this helped me to finally start painting. An eternity of horizons was open in front of me, together with two big travels to Columbia and Australia, I understand this happy season as staying on an abandoned island, therefore the name "Two years’ vacation".
 
2) In 2004 you painted large format canvases "Roads of swifts" and "Mother Earth". In the sametime frame you also painted "Chaple of Karlin", and even before that, "Envelopes" were created, therefore in your own way you are continuing with something that was created long before?  

Of course, I was already painting in the '70s during my studies. Back then I inherited very rare pigments from prof. Slánský, which I am using presently. The first time I used them was during my exhibition in Rudolfinum, when there was a need to paint something great for "Silent Hall" and a figure of the central deity arose, which is appearing in my works in different varieties. Connection with the material was always important for me. The type of work on the ground on the non-gesso canvas, together with water diluted pigments and acrylate bonds demanded this physical contact. Even in some places on the paintings, there are my footprints.

A wall painting "Chaple of Karlin" was in somewhat a cleansing exhibition after the floods in 2002, and according to an agreement I had to turn it white. The oldest envelopes date back to 1986. The style of their decoration is connected with the style of "Third rococo" and that epoch is accumulated in my works. In the '90s I created multiple large format envelopes, which I perceived as the object/pictures having multiple-meanings and it opened an inexhaustible line packed into certain cushions, similar to guitars. This is related to my favourite non-standard formats (ovals) and adjusting large canvasses "free" without the stretcher bar.
 
3) What was most interesting thing about Australia? 

First of all never ending space and starry skies. Five weeks, every evening by the fire in the desert. Furthermore, colours and rock paintings as old as 60 000 years. This was the first time I have seen baobabs and eucalypti that were 800 years old, which existed way before the arrival of whites... breathtaking scenery. I brought back a lot of collected materials and natural clay, with which I am painting. Australians have a "story" for each god, they are mostly cautionary stories, which have helped to keep the tribes viable. It appears to me as there are various imaginary divinities, however, they were born from the transcultural backdrop. Something interesting is that the rock paintings and figures on it are very similar all around the world, but I am not the type who would study these things in much detail. On the other hand, I deliberately keep certain blindness, to be astonished, and I would recommend this to consumers. Those who ask too much will learn too much.

4) Some rusty images look a bit apocalyptic, did it have any specific impulse?

"Rusty images" are painted by some rusty mud from a forested swamp in West Czech. In fact, they are ferric nano-shells of microorganisms. I discovered this beautiful colour in the '70s, which came back to me now, to extract it artistically. Thematically, they partly follow the cycle of thermo-drawings "Landscapes from Timelessness" or the cycle of graphics "Giants", where the power of nature is personified into supernatural beings. People desire to witness a miracle or other paranormal acts, and we have this advantage that we can also paint them. Also, people are drawn to the aesthetic of natural disasters and the theatre of extinction. Towards the end however, the road took me elsewhere.
 
5) When you were in Columbia, did you try yagé -the most renowned shamanic hallucinogen?

I don’t need to check what I suspect. I don't need to meet God. I don't want to upset him. He
could stop passing me.
 
The interview led Miroslav Ambroz

THE FRAGMENTS OF SETS / THE SELECTION FROM THE FAIT GALLERY COLLECTION

24.01.2015 - 21.05.2015

Fait Gallery
Božetěchova Street 1 (entrance from Metodějova Street), Brno
24/1 – 21/5/2015
Opening: 22/1/2015 at 7pm
Curators: Denisa Kujelová

THE FRAGMENTS OF SETS

Martin Gerboc, Milan Grygar, Ondřej Homola, Vladimír Houdek, Matyáš Chochola, Věra Janoušková, Jiří Kolář, Eva Koťátková, Karel Malich, Michal Pěchouček, Johana Pošová, Luděk Rathouský, Pavla Sceranková, František Skála, Robert Šalanda, Jindřich Štyrský and Kateřina Vincourová

The current exhibition presents a Fait Gallery collection devoted to the works of authors who work with collages, assemblages, installations, or in their approach often shows the additive principle of layering and composing of various fragments. In general though most art works use a strategy of juxtaposition, moving of found objects as well as the picture material and create sets of differently distant or close realities. The fragmentation is one of the defining characteristics of modernity and a practice that was previously applied only in the arts. Moving of the object from one context to another is a process that, with the start of the industrial revolution, the global trade, the daily movement of huge number of subjects and data, became the determining principle affecting the entire current social and cultural life, but also the man as an individual himself, his identity, and positioning in a dense network of relationships and meanings.

The creative methods of sampling and appropriation brought to the art itself and to the creativity an admittedly high degree of freedom. The collage is therefore one of the major techniques and expressive means of art since the early 20th century up until the present day, especially for its ability to quickly and instantly find context, thanks to the use of shortcuts and paradox. The newly discovered creative role of fragmentation and its metaphors brought to the modern art a new perspective not only on its own subjectivity, but mainly in objectivity in the form of the anonymity of the latent creative potential, such as work with randomness, automation and free association. A rediscovered meaning of analogy has brought new potentialities in work with characters, archetypes and cultural stereotypes, and created a model of quickly changing reality. Analogy may point to a connection of two ideological objects based in different levels, or rather allows to establish deep, but also shallow and frail relations between individual items.

The authors, represented in the selection, approach all these creative strategies from different perspectives and with different motivations. The presented art works thus; approach the principle of collage as a means to search for a distinctive art form and poetry rich in associative and inspiring play with meanings, but also as an element, which through its own essence critically refers to different ways of isolation and exclusion of the details out of the whole and their incept as freely workable and usable sources, objects. In the context of the collages of Max Ernst, Kurt Schwitters, through surrealistic composition of unexpected encounters, Pop art and the current dominant Internet environment, the artists represented in the selection are not lost in the context, thanks to their unique approaches, experiments and techniques, such as Jindřich Štyrský, Jiří Kolář or Eva Koťátková, who belong among the important names in international art.

We move at the current time along different levels of historic archives and we jump from one cross reference to another, we communicate in shortcuts and fragments that represent large units. We should not forget that the discovery of the work with found objects and their context was closely followed by the efforts to converge the art with everyday life in modern civilization. Therefore from a certain time the art is full of everyday objects in familiar, but also strange situations and conversely everyday life becomes full of art.

Denisa Kujelová

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