Václav Stratil / Landscapes

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.

Václav Stratil / Landscapes

15.06.2016 - 19.11.2016

Fait Gallery
Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
21. 9. - 19. 11. 2016
Vernissage: 21. 9. 2016 at 7pm
Curator: Jiří Ptáček

The further extended continuation of Stratil’s exhibition Landscapes shows the next chapters in the life work of the Brno painter, illustrator and performer in relation to his friends, colleagues and students. Besides the older and often legendary works (legendary because they are brought to the younger generation by the memories of the older generation) we also introduce the artist's current work with photos and text. The main theme of the exhibition Landscapes, however, is the relationship to others and showing yourself in "analog" social networking and communication.

Resumption of the second, further extended completed version of Stratil’s exhibition will, in addition, become an opportunity to release the author’s new music album "Láška" (translation note: play on words, seems to be pointing to the word ‘Love’), which was created with the contribution of the Fait Gallery. "The album „Láška“ with old as well as new songs is the second set of Stratil’s musical production.

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"It was not just a repetition of the act of usurping of the classic works and reproducing them under his own name, because objectively and for Stratil's also subjectively it could have worked just with Boštík with all aspects that this exact option has, starting with the fact that Stratil is Boštík‘s younger friend, who really loves him, despite the fact that just Boštík’s works really have the spiritual quality that makes them something extraordinary, to the the fact that Boštík is now primarily a subject of a market and a victim of our fast newly rich."1 A passage from a text by Jiří Valoch, written a year after Stratil exhibited photographic enlargements of black and white reproductions of paintings by Václav Boštík2, seems to be an appropriate introduction to the topic of the exhibition Landscapes. On the one hand Valoch mentiones basic statements that led to its organisation, but using specific examples it points out the layers of meaning, which in our case, are specifically because of the chosen concept, suppressed. The semantic and contextual diversity of Stratil‘s works here is suppressed by the conceptual key of the exhibition, which is observing the artist's creative approach to other people and their work.

Should the key fulfil its purpose, it is necessary for it to unlock the room, or at least the door of the house. At the exhibition, where we, next to Boštík‘s reproductions, present a photo album from the second half of the nineties, in which Stratil handled the personal and family history in different ways, or album created by his father and exhibited by the artist as ready-made, but also for example the "mutual monochromes" with Jan Nálevka from the end of the same decade or recent, partner-painted paintings with Martin Helán, however, we can still trace Stratil’s continuous interest in "authorial connection". Provided Jiří Valoch in his text says that the usurpation could work just with Boštík,3 he covers the aspects of intimacy and intensity that Stratil is attracted to in the long term. If we mention, for example, "stealing" of the principle of symmetrical portraits from the photo collection by Jiří David Hidden forms (1991-1995) and their use for self-portraits (1998)4, or the colouring in of his father's teaching tables (Latin, 2009), a strong personal relationship was always a fundamental dimension which preceded the creation of such works. The variable in this direction was (and remains) only the level of articulation of the relationship and of course the role of collective work, citation or appropriation in the context of contemporary theoretical debates. Should his works, in the nineties, be seen as a commentary on the identity of the image and the importance of authorship, or as movements in quadrature proximity-distance-originality-non originality, ie within the intellectual horizons of this phase of Czech post-modernism, with the transition into the new millennium there has been increasingly promoted the perspective of personal involvement.

Stratil‘s motive may be based on the relation to another person, but also on a specific artistic collection or an individual art piece. It can not be strange to him, it must catch him, he must be interested, or at least be irritatred. "The combination of modernism and postmodernism," thus happens somehow unusually - as calling the personal commitment and intimacy back into the spotlight.

The title of this exhibition is derived from a photo collection Czech landscape (1998-1999)5. That was arranged by Stratil as a map of his professional partners and friends. If these photos appear alongside other series, such as photographic Couples (2002-2003 and 2015-2016), we want to emphasise this very level of personal maps. The thoroughness and persistence of drawing through out is the first aspect that does not have a competition in the Czech art scene. The second and even more important aspect for us, is the increasing need for an intense relationship. Without wanting to prefer its psychological interpretation, we need to realise that we see Stratil as a solitaire focused mainly on the investigation of himself. The exhibition Landscapes does not deny this dimension of his artistic work, but reminds us of the importance of establishing a relationship and its public manifestation of a coherent and distinct line within his work. I would not be surprised, however, if you would have, besides intellectual game, passion, humor or pathos, also noticed loneliness that fatally follows those who so strongly urge for the other person.

1. Valoch, Jiří: The art combining modernism and postmodernism. In: Daněk, Ladislav (ed.): Václav Stratil / Drawings 1955-2000. Olomouc Art Museum, Olomouc 2000, pp. 65.

2. Václav Stratil. Collective exhibition, Nová síň Gallery, Prague 1997.

3. Also important was the resemblance of the enlarged reproductions of Boštík’s pictures with Stratil’s ink cross-hatching drawings from the second half of the 80s.

4. Václav Stratil. Hidden forms. Behémót Gallery, Prague, 1998.

5. In the enlargements of the publicly presented one only once so far – at the exhibition with the same name in Malá galerie Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague (1999).

T: Jiří Ptáček

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