Markéta Othová / 1990–2018

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

Markéta Othová / 1990–2018

23.05.2018 - 04.08.2018

Fait Gallery MEM, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno

opening: 23. 5. 2018 at 7 pm

curator: Denisa Kujelová

Markéta Othová is a visual artist transgressing the clear definitions of photography, her most frequent medium. Her work defies conventional photographic procedures which the artist deliberately opposes, also in the case of this show. Here, Markéta accentuates the seeming banality of the documented, completely ordinary things with the use of the non-photographic record characteristic of digital archiving and with the choice of an ephemeral material for her typical enlargements. Large formats are in stark contrast with the intimacy of the chosen subject. Through the use of billboard paper and a scanner, the artist again intentionally defies photography in the true sense of the word, wiping out the borders between photographic and graphic art.

Examining the potential of a visual communication reflecting, in particular, the subjects of reality, time and memory which she addresses continuously, Markéta Othová employs her own means of expression which are also, to some extent, facilitated by her freedom as a self-taught photographer; in addition, this position makes the appropriation of the alternative possibilities of records easier for her. In this somewhat depersonalised manner she processes personal things from her private archive, subordinating them to the A4 format on the 1:1 scale. The colour digital record subsequently became for her part of a natural transition to colour photography.

While in her previous works the artist had often taken photographs intuitively, without a pre-set frame, and the meaning of the photos was only defined by the composition of the whole, the series of small scanned objects was preceded by a clear concept. In 2004 Markéta Othová systematically recorded her favourite things such as boxes containing photographs, fabrics, printed matter and patterns on paper, as well as various diaries including this series. She continued with their active use and the following collecting, and another scanning process took place in 2005-2017, within the preparation of this exhibition project, and in order to complete it, again in 2018. The result was literally the archiving on an archive. The missing 1992 diary does not render the work deliberately incomprehensible, which was often the case with the sequence of the individual shots with her previous pieces, neither is the year attributed a different meaning.

Due to its character and a clear regressive time definition, the exhibition is partially a retrospective. The storing of a dictionary entry is definitely a look back, yet at the same time it concisely and with a time gap presents past events and realities. However, these are hidden and only sensed underneath the white-printed signs of the years when they happened. And although the meaning of the artist’s personal retrospective is not transferrable, the succession of four-digit numbers indicates the validity of associations as the given data also obviously relates to all of us. Presumably, everybody has their own or mediated experience with the use of diaries, and through the general effectiveness and topicality of this object can be steered towards collective memory and an unexpectedly intimate self-reflection.

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