Ewa & Jacek Doroszenko / EXERCISES OF LISTENING

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

Ewa & Jacek Doroszenko / EXERCISES OF LISTENING

23.03.2016 - 30.04.2016

Fait Gallery PREVIEW
Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
23rd March - 4th May 2016
Opening: 23rd March 2016 at 7 pm

Photo: archive of Ewa a Jacek Doroszenkom

Sound is a process of moving particles. Hearing is a physical, biological process. We are constantly experiencing sound, but most of it goes unnoticed because we are really not listening to it. Listening begins when we become conscious of sound and focus on this sense. In the art by Ewa Doroszenko and Jacek Doroszenko sound is treated as a legitimate material of a field of visual art.

“Exercises of listening” is a continuation of the project by Ewa Doroszenko and Jacek Doroszenko. The show consists of videos, graphic prints and sound installations in which audible and visible spheres interact with each other and the narration is based on the associations freely suggested by memory. Listeners find themselves more concerned with things than with sounds, which do not exist as visible matter. People often ascribe a meaning of a sound to object that created it. Putting these objects together makes some kind of narration and storytelling. This is the main reason that Ewa and Jacek Doroszenko typically use a representation of objects to reveal an audible essence of reality.

Video works “The same horizon repeated at every moment of the walk”, created during an artistic residence at the Fundació AAVC Hangar in Barcelona (2014) and “It’s hard to find a polyphonic body”, produced during an artistic residence at the Kunstnarhuset Messen in Ålvik, Norway (2015), shows the landscapes that becomes a musical notation system. In these short audio-visual compositions, an activity of moving figure determines the pitch on the scale of each frame, from higher to lower. Primary elements of a musical composition by Jacek Doroszenko are left to the determination of Ewa Doroszenko as a performer. Jacek Doroszenko creates also a combination of sounds that have been captured in an immersive environment. The installation consists of loud speakers. Each speaker emits different track and all together produce a high frequency sound wall, full of details.

Ewa Doroszenko confronts herself with acoustic environment through more remote references, attempting to translate selected audio events to the visual language. Her graphic prints illustrate the flow of sound material: collecting, archiving and reproduction in the context of digital times. As well as audio recordings, graphic collages consist of detailed layers, but the basis for these works is a connection to modern music notation systems. Ewa Doroszenko uses graphical language to articulate the characteristics of a particular sound recording: rhythm, pulse, progression are elements of each composition also in a field of visual expression.

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