Lumír Hladík, Matyáš Chochola
Telepresence of a Gasoline Warlock of the Digital Era
and his Green-Brown Gown-Clad Marten in the Temple
of Heavens During Late New Moon
GAVU Cheb, Small Gallery
22. 1. – 15. 3. 2015
Curator: Jen Kratochvil
Colours
Totalitarian Czechoslovakia jiggling incessantly on tender wavelets
of shades of gray.
Primeval forests, shopping centers, the ocean, Costa Rica, Munich,
gold mines in Ontario, a gallery in Chelsea, an aboriginal dump site
and its proprietor, selling bear skulls, vistas of uncontrolled color
explosions all the way from the almighty mammon’s usurpation of
one’s attention via advertising politics of the world markets, to riotous variation of improbabilities on the wings of a passing flying bird.
Observing the black and white photographic (film is a rarity)
documentation of the work of famous names of Czech action art in
the late 70s; Kovanda, Štembera, Miller or Hladík, will give you an
impression of a certain formal stability with a hint of inappropriate
chaos.
Photographs of Jiří Kovanda opening his arms towards a stream of
passing pedestrians on Wenceslas Square, Štembera measuring
stairs, Lumír watching the Baltic Sea’s reflection in a mirror or his
twenty minute vigil in front of a anonymous, closed door. The dichromatism in all those images is being disturbed by some colorful
reflections passing through them.
The reality of the normalized (post-soviet invasion, reinstated
communist) Czechoslovakia of the70s, from the perspective of my
twenty-eight years, emerges as a conceptual model reconstructed
from diverse channels of shared experience; the picture is far from
clear and a disturbing one nevertheless. Despite frequent declarations that the activities of the unofficial group of Czech artists were
apolitical in nature, it is apparent that their subtle, often deliberately
invisible manifestations were, in some ways, reflections of every-
with hindsight, we will view these tendencies of return-to-the-matter vehemently connected to the „Post-internet“ phenomenon
more objectively. Today, we do not even know what these terms
actually mean, we just endlessly regurgitate them, we are publishing series of essays about them and organize conferences in
order to, after reading it all, eventually, end up this quest with the
initial essential question. We are simply voluntarily enslaved by our
tendency to define and categorize matters within cages of our own
definitions, content of which is too volatile to begin with and to be
captured by a formula.
The search for eternity and spirituality of any new age is an old
topic. For each generation, however, this redefining process
becomes an inevitable necessity. Matyáš reads Franzen’s Golden
Bough, reflects on cyclical time and animism: the same way as all
the generations before him, again and again. Does any repetition,
however, depreciate any current effort?
Matyáš is a typical Post-Internet artist.
“I am fed up with all those post-internets”, he claims. Post-Internets...
venetian stucco, artificial marble, gold palm trees and blurred TV
reception - all this truly repulsive in their shapes and noises, in
addition to a tribal dance in the background.
So what do all these texts say about the current direction of art making? Post--Internet is not something after the end of the Internet,
but it’s beginning, and, what‘s more important, after its expansion.
We live now with a very specific everyday experience of mail on our
phones, with Facebook, Twitter and instant burgers dressed with
double-lime mayonnaise: home made, of course. Our perceptions
have radically changed through overabundance of information and
its untamable streams.
day banality. Italian theorist Franco Berardi admits that it is quite
difficult to define art, however, we can get around it by using a simple statement that defines an artist as a person, who’s perception of
“things” around him/her subtly deviates from the one shared by rest
of the society. It is this very deviation that relates and explains the
colour we can observe on the black and white photographs produced by the action artists of the post-soviet invasion era: a tiny seed
of seemingly controlled chaos within otherwise solid barriers.
Today, when Lumír grabs a dry branch in the forest, dresses it up
with gauze and sprays it with pink and silver colour or inserts a
drawing of a dead tree bark into a deerskin, we may, from at a first
glance perspective and by juxtaposing it to his 70s work, reflect on
it in terms of some oversized, simplified post-conceptual theatricality, overindulgence and stylization. His „Bear’s art“, as I call it,
is created in a natural interaction with minimally regulated nature
of Canada‘s national parks. Lumír places objects in the woods, in a
spot teaming with wildlife, not only enticing its intervention but also
exposing it to the process of natural entropy. The object usually
consists of carefully selected and intermingled artifacts originating
from various contexts. After some time, Lumír removes the object
from the woods and enhances it using additional elements. How far
removed is this sorting-out-of-time-memes and the process around
it from the action art, to which Lumír had been devoted in then
Czechoslovakia? For example… from the creation of a geometric
map of single elements in an unplowed field, positioned 10m apart,
which he created together with Jiří Kovanda?
Materiality
Allegedly, we live in the time of the so-called „new materiality“; at
least the art world is swinging and undulating on it for some time. A
categorization of what is current is always problematic. Perhaps,
But this does not explain the artificial marble, iridescent reflective
surfaces, the amethyst geode with feathers or scribbles on a dibond
surface. Matyáš is a typical Post-Internet artist and, as such, of course, rejects the notion of Post-Internet. We should all do the same.
We should wait.
Just as anyone else, Matyáš is not a Post-Internet artist.
There is no Post-Internet. There is only Matyáš.
Times.
Again, Jiří Kovanda is being discussed, what was then, what is
today. Great topic.Kovanda has shifted from his subtle actions to
discreet installations, which we all love and people on the outside
looking at them repeat the same ignorant eternal question: “and
this is art”? So they are told, in a shortsighted manner, that this
gentleman is ranked in the top of some bank indexes of the greatest
living Czech artists and, people, again, are shaking their heads and
knocking them against the wall.
We found branches, but made sure the entire thing would not turn
out too natural, found Styrofoam, but beware, not let it be too Styrofoam. Colours, pink and silver, what Lumír likes, everything else
what Matyáš likes. We are creating compositions via comprehensive alchemical instructions on how to do something that is not too
different and vice versa. We are composing via precisely disdainful
messiness. Three days spent in the woods gave birth to new art,
which, otherwise, we would had to wait for a long time to come. We
included a mix of art pieces from Prague and Toronto.
Behold, here it is, an exhibition in the city of Cheb.
Jen Kratochvil
Lumír Hladík, Matyáš Chochola
Small gallery , 22. 1. 2015 – 22. 3. 2015
Curator: Jen Kratochvil
Opening 21.January 2015 at 17.00
Visiting hours: Tue – Sun, 10.00 – 17.00
Parallel exhibitions
Stanislav Diviš, Remnants
Visiting hours, 21. 1.– 22. 3. 2015
Informel and its extentions
From our depository, 21. 1. – 29. 3. 2015
Tereza Říčanová
Museum Café, 9. 10. – 29. 3. 2015
Gallery of Fine Arts, city of Cheb
a contributing organization of the Carlsbad region
address:
Náměstí Krále Jiřího z Poděbrad 16, 350 02 Cheb
T: +420 354 422 450, F: +420 354 422 163
[email protected], www.gavu.cz
Lumír Hladík belonged to the late 70s to the narrow circle of Czech action art and
body art, along with Peter Štembera, Jan Mlčoch, Karel Miler or Jiří Kovanda, which
he was closest to. Since 1981 he lives in Toronto, Canada, where he dedicated his
time to various interests until about twenty years later he decided to return to his
artistic career. Pavlína Morganová commemorated his work in monograph, published
by SVIT Gallery in Prague in 2011.
Matyáš Chochola finished his studies this year in the studio of Vladimír Skrepl and
Jiří Kovanda at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He belongs to the most
outstanding contemporary young artists, which was appreciated by the jury of the city
of Zlín’s Salon of Young artists by awarding him the Prize of Václav Chad (2012).
The gallery‘s promotianal materials are funded by the Ministry of Culture
2015, published by GAVU. Text Jen Kratochvil,
graphic design Anna Divišová