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

The artists of the collective exhibition The Other Side of a Photograph share unusual visuality, the consistency of light and the concept of individual photographs that challenge conventions. Selected works by the tandem of Lukáš Jasanský and Martin Polák, Michal Kalhous, Alena Kotzmannová, Marie Kratochvílová and Markéta Othová, in dialogue with Jan Svoboda's personal approach to photography and Jiří Kovanda's subtle interventions, allow us to glimpse, through their shared sensitivity, the hidden reality of the world in unexpected detail.

The selection of analogue, mostly black-and-white photographs seemingly captures what almost all of us see. In many cases, banal and sometimes even unphotogenic situations, often emphasised in a deliberately unprofessional manner to the point of amateur photography, are sometimes embarrassing. However, the mundane in them opens up wide boundaries of beauty that we probably would not have thought of without their help. Susan Sontag descrines it in the chapter The Heroism of Vision: “No one has ever found ugliness through photography. But many have discovered beauty in this way. Except when the camera is used for documentation or as part of a social ritual, what makes people take photographs is a desire to find something beautiful..."[1]

All of the artists, like Jan Svoboda (1934-1990) from the late 1960s, have in various ways transcended the established principles and canons of photography and in their distinctive approach deliberately questioned its supposed message and formal perfection, expanding it with new possibilities of treatment and perception. "The things I do show no artistry. And I want them not to. I want them not to be pretty, to be as ordinary as possible, not to dazzle, not to shock, not to surprise...”[2] Just like Svoboda's work, the works of the mentioned artists have never aspired to conform to standard photographic practices, and like him, some of them have also expressed their opposition to the very term photographer. The theorists Pavel Vančát and Jan Freiberg introduced for their broader thinking and grasp of the medium the fitting tem of "nonphotography"[3] referencing the term anti- or non-photography coined by Nancy Foote in 1976 in relation to postmodern photography.[4]

What makes their photographs so similar is their sophisticated work with technical imperfection, the peculiar tonality of the narrow grey scale and often the use of large formats in sharp contrast to the intimacy and apparent banality of the chosen subjects. Like Svoboda, they focus on their immediate surroundings such as the environment of their homes and the ordinary objects with which we share our private space. In a photograph constructed as an autonomous surface, the role of light in its reflection and absorption is essential, and so is the relationship between objects and their background, with its demarcation often so subtle that the two planes almost merge. This is of course enhanced by the narrow tonality of grey in the choice of black-and-white photography: "Since black-and-white configurations are theoretical, they cannot really exist in the world. But black-and-white photographs do exist. They are in fact the images of the conceptions of the theory of optics, which means that they arose from this theory. [...] Therein lies their strange beauty, identical to the beauty of the conceptual universe. This is why many photographers prefer black-and-white photographs as they reveal more clearly the true meaning of photography, i.e. the world of conceptios."[5]

In regard to the legacy of Jan Svoboda and his exceptional sensitivity, the exhibition shows selected photographs from the broader oeuvres of the individual artists in which forms and procedures more or less referring to Svoboda's work can be recognized. Due to the very narrow theme scope of the exhibition concept, images from various cycles and in some cases diptychs have been selected in collaboration with the artists, and it should be noted that their meaning, which was established in the original context through the composition of their units, has been altered for this specific event.

[1] SONTAG, Susan. O fotografii. Brno, Praha a Litomyšl: Barrister & Principal a Paseka, p. 80.

[2] OTHOVÁ, Markéta; CÍSAŘ, Karel; JANÍČKOVÁ, Adéla, a NOVOTNÝ, Michal. Markéta Othová: již brzy. V Praze: Národní galerie, 2022, p. 7.

[3] VANČÁT, Pavel, a FREIBERG, Jan (eds.). Fotografie?? / Photography?? (exh. cat.). Klatovy: Galerie Klatovy / Klenová, 2004.

[4] FOOTE, Nancy. The Anti-Photographers. Artforum, September 1976, year 15, no. 1., pp. 46–54. Also here:

Douglas FOGLE (ed.). The Last Picture Show. Artists Using Photography, 1960–1982 (exh. cat.). Minneapolis: Walker Art Center 2003, pp. 24–31.

[5] FLUSSER, Vilém. Za filosofii fotografie. Prague: Fra, 2013, pp. 48–49.

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

Go back