Igor Hosnedl / Emerald Syrup from the Orchard of Promises

As if the main contradiction of the present didn’t lie in the very problems we are currently facing, from climate change to the revival of populism and misinterpretation. Perhaps the most serious pitfall of today is our inability to share these problems and fears, as well as values, visions and solutions.

There is a name for our involvement with the world, its building and suffering — it’s simply work. We don’t necessarily have to understand it as an occupation but as a process in which our activities and ideas are given sense and co-shape the world in which we live.

By extension, art is not just the production of exhibitions and artworks; it enters our shared imagination, enriching it with images, visions and criticism. At our exhibition for the Fait Gallery we are trying to open up this process, to invite the viewer closer, to the podium which dominates the gallery space and provides the installations with a joint framework and context.

The platform is modified for art, as well as for work and leisure in the form of a co-working space and two in-built lounges supplemented with chairs from Pavla Sceranková’s previous art projects. The podium-table thus assigns the meaning to the individual installations while at the same time it also invites the audience to enter the process, the cycle of work and leisure giving sense to both works of art and our world.

Pavla Sceranková shows the human situation ruled by the current work culture. In a series of plasticine figurines created by the pupils from an art school (the work is called Klára) she lets us observe the dissolving of shapes and the blending and merging of matter. The number of endangered species becomes a metaphor for the current environmental issues, as well
as for joint and applied work which is inevitably multiplied, affected by social expectations, and still can be shared and useful and mediate values, including aesthetic ones.

Milada, again named after a person devising the particular project and working on it, combines an elastic suit with performance. It invites you to a flexible, enchanting but subjugating part-time life which enfolds you like tight-fitting underwear. In contrast, Miloš, a figure rooted in the gallery podium, seeks a base and anchoring, perhaps even the return to reflections on nature and the corresponding rhythm, harmony and deceleration.

Our presence, be it social time or personal experience, seems to develop in loops intersecting the show, as demonstrated by the Ilja installation. It is not just a suspended loom, the return of working techniques to the space of a former factory, the picking up of the threads of work which was interrupted. It also manifests the cyclic nature of work as such, the circle of knitting and undoing, work and leisure, creation and destruction.

Dušan Zahoranský incorporates in his work the subject of communication. In a series of fake phone calls written on dummy cell phones (Mária), he comments on the overwhelming presence of (online) communication today, as well as on the isolated, private, almost absurd dimension of the possibility of instant communication.

The monumental ring (Libor) encircling the gallery ramp brings to the space office furniture and the issues of the stereotypization and commodification of work, or semiocapitalism. Our work environment and application are often subordinated to phenomena such as open space, home office, flexitime, as well as the necessity to be constantly available on email, mobile phone and social networks. In this way, capitalism does not only appropriate our time and work but also the creation of meaning and sense.

In addition, Zahoranský views critically the idea of a universal, non-specific or fully transparent language. In a series of coloured grids of digital characters, Mirek and Kateřina, he stages a combination of type, communication and digital culture, while in the central installation entitled Dušan he symbolically “stole” the letters “o” from his own email communication.

The artist works in similar fashion with the sharing of films on the popular server uloz.to (Artur series). He cut one minute from each film and uploaded the files again; not only to alter the films circulating among the server users, but also to work further with the “stolen” time. This time appears to represent the negative of work time and circulation, the possibility of hiding (as an artist) and working outside the affective loops of digital communication and the capitalist order.

Project was created with financial support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and
Statutory city of Brno.

Igor Hosnedl / Emerald Syrup from the Orchard of Promises

05.06.2019 - 17.08.2019

Fait Gallery, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno

Opening: 5. 6. 2019 at 7pm

Curator: Domenico de Chirico

“There is virtually no difference between biological and psychic formations. As a plant produces blossoms, so the psyche produces symbols.”

C. G. Jung
Psychoanalysis and Analytical Psychology

The word “syrup” is derived from the Old Arabic sharāb, and its tendency towards taking different forms indicates holiness and mystery as it is inherently typified by blending — a “magic” mixture taken in order to achieve the state of bliss. This concoction is probably emerald green, precious and holy — the Holy Grail has an impenetrable green glow resembling absinth. This life-giving substance also works as a fuel, a life-giving sap presenting the human ego with the most disquieting questions, the most radical illogical codes, i.e. the energy which is the essence of life. A plant originating in this way is not simply a plant; it represents a seed from which forests will grow: paintings, in which the internal response surfacing in all its dialectics of return is manifested. These responses are not generated by emotive internality; they are close to rituals and sense but are shrouded in hints and always in a permanent tension with interstellar phases discernible between a distant leaf and a hand, a close sound and velvet.

According to C. G. Jung, the opposites of the persona and the ego are the inhabitants of the unconscious, aka archetypes. These are defined as the archaic relics of the psyche and as such are present from birth. They are connected with the mythical subjects of the primal spirit, have their own independent energy and initiatory character. They are strongly characterized by magic and emotions so exceptional that they are present in every human being. The Self is an authority rooted in natural forces and represents the inner controlling centre, while the task of the ego is to bring this unity to the light of consciousness so that it could aim at the constant maturing and growth of the personality. The Self changes into creative energy if the ego is devoid of any purpose-oriented thoughts and calculations, and its natural drives are at the same time the carriers of energy and a very high potential of evocation. These drives do not correspond to our individual wishes and will, as the Self requires obedience. With the ego, no contracts apply. The Self represents what is typical of the human being as such, or the essence which can only manifest as a symbol. Symbols constitute a specific language, they are natural and spontaneous forms, which is why they cannot be created.

The function of the archetypes is to give rise to the Self and enable it to shake the trees in the Orchard of promises, to hurt it and thus acquire metaphorical symbols of victory, like resin from
a tree. Igor Hosnedl’s paintings rooted in drawing and employing the archetypes as automatic drawing exist even before the brush is dipped in paint.

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