25.10.2023 - 13.01.2024
Fait Gallery, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Curator: Denisa Kujelová
Opening: 25th October, 7 pm
The early work of Jiří Hilmar (*1937) was marked by the art trends of the time, especially the principles of Concretism[1] (whose club[2] he co-founded in Czechoslovakia in 1967), as well as by the activation of the viewer, the processuality of perception and the thematization of movement. Kinetic objects in the form of mechanical machines and objects working with light sources and shadow effects[3] were followed by several years of the artist's thorough investigation of the phenomenon of mobile procedural perception in paper reliefs folded into optical structures. These mostly square formats of various sizes produced an optical illusion through the movement of the observer and the change of his or her position in relation to the work, thus transforming the visual qualities of the surface.
In the square, whose shape the artist saw as an ideal anonymous form[4] referring to the ideas of Piet Mondrian, Kazimir Malevich or Victor Vasarely, he created structures in various systems according to mathematical principles and seriality from horizontally, vertically and diagonally arranged monochrome or multicolour strips of folded and, in many cases, also incised paper. The opto-kinetic principle was achieved by varying the height of the strips, their shape, the method and degree of their bending, the method of perforation, and also the shape and colour of the tempera used for individual fragments (most often circles and their sections). The variation of contrasts and intersections continued after his emigration to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1969, where he settled for more than 40 years.
The active involvement of the viewer was also part of the next cycle of works which were defined by a system of overlapping vertical strips or strings. In this new structural plan, in which one of the elements was always firmly attached to the base and the other hung freely above it, the works could again be set in motion, now literally, by the participation of the observer. Parallel to this, in the 1970s the artist created monochromes from layered tracing paper, fixed to canvas or wooden boards, most often also in square formats. The individual layers of transparent paper were only recognizable by their deliberate distortion with various types of creasing, perforation, rippling and gradations or variations of the repetitive regular patterns of the collaged fragments.
After moving to the Halfmannshof art colony in Gelsenkirchen in 1974, located in the heavily devastated landscape of the Ruhr area, Hilmar naturally moved towards environmental issues. In addition to paper, he began to incorporate into his reliefs natural materials such as jute, wax, kaolin and also wood, in the form of sticks and matchsticks. In the 1980s, when nature became an equal co-agent in his work, and creative intervention in natural processes started to prevail in his work, he turned permanently to a single material - wood. He partially dismantled the original autonomous shapes of branches and trunks and then reconstructed them by rejoining, tying or crossing them into new units of wooden objects and installations. He deliberately interfered in the originally round found fragments of trees in an invasive and openly completely contradictory square manner followed by a final gesture of re-rounding, in order to manifest the oneness of man and nature, which he sought in his work and life.
Literature:
HILMAR, Jiří, VÍCHOVÁ, Ilona, HIEKISCH-PICARD, Sepp. Jiří Hilmar/ Adagio. Praha, Museum Kampa – Nadace Jana a Medy Mládkových, 2015.
POHRIBNÝ, Arsen. Klub konkrétistů po dvaceti letech. In: Revue K, 1988–89, nos. 32–33.
“Optické reliéfy“ Jiřího Hilmara, Rozhlas, ČRo 3 – Vltava, Mozaika, 24 February 2011.
[1] The principles of Concretism were defined in interwar art by Theo van Doesburg, who first used and coined the term in 1930, and later in the 1930s by Max Bill, the main promoter of this art movement. De Stijl, the Bauhaus, and also the Russian avant-garde were followed in the 1950s by the activities of the Swiss neo-concretists led by Richard Paul Lohse, and partly by kinetic art in the Düsseldorf Zero movement, the GRAV group in Paris, the Gruppo N in Padua and the Gruppo T in Milan.
[2] Together with Tomáš Rajlich, Radoslav Kratina, Miroslav Vystrčil and the art theorist Arsén Pohribný he co-founded the KK/CC - The Concretists’ Club (9 May 1967 - ca. 1972), whose activities were followed by the new KK2 in 1997 and KK3 in 2007.
[3] In this context it is also worth mentioning hydro-kinetic objects from 1974.
[4] “Optické reliéfy“ Jiřího Hilmara, Rozhlas, ČRo 3 – Vltava, Mozaika, 24 February 2011.
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Fait Gallery MEM, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Opening: 26 Februar 2020 at 7pm
Curator: Denisa Kujelová
The interest in the record of natural sounds and rhythms links Olga Karlíková with the context of conceptual artists and composers of experimental music who combine tones with visual art. Her work captures the sounds of various animal species and natural phenomena in the painting medium, with the graphic records of bird songs making up the most prominent part of her oeuvre.
Olga Karlíková started to work on a cycle of original drawings involving the acoustics of anatural space, represented in her case by the songs of birds and later by the trajectories and rhythms of their flight, in 1965, and the series anticipated the efforts of other Czechoslovak conceptual artists responding to nature: It was in 1965. I was walking through the Chotkovysady park, I remember this distinctly, and I was listening to a thrush. Suddenly I also saw it. I made some very awkward notes in my pocket calendar. Apart from numerous, systematically created series of drawings capturing the songs of birds and whales, the croaking of frogs as well as the sounds of bells and drums, the artist produced over the next forty years drawing records of various natural phenomena, for example, the trajectory of a ray of sunlight at equinox.
Karlíková’s creative approach and thinking in the 1960s came close to Josef Šíma, and especially to Václav Boštík and Jiří John. However, the intuitive, lyrical and intimate sensitivity to landscape is in her work subordinated to the fascination by natural phenomena and laws and their ardent exploration, with strict self-discipline and precise, systematic work. Her unique records of acoustic perceptions show parallels with the work of artists experimenting with the new possibilities of musical record. Yet in contrast to John Cage and his pupils from the Black Mountain College, Milan Grygar and his performance acoustic drawings and other artists employing free musical records, Olga Karlíková’s work did not primarily serve reinterpretation but captured actions in progress. Olga Karlíková’s work in its unique fashion of the transformation of natural acoustic phenomena anticipated conceptual leanings in Czechoslovak art, and through its strong ties with landscape also the work of Dalibor Chatrný, Marian Palla, Miloš Šejn, Inge Kosková, Pavel Holouš, Milan Maur and others.
In order to induce synaesthesic perception, i.e. the interlinking of the visual aspect of an artwork and its sound model, the records of bird songs are presented together with their possible sound “templates” - the recordings of the songs of particular birds. The identification of the individual bird species and the following classification roughly corresponding to audio-recordings could be reconstructed thanks to the artist’s natural need for making records of different types of bird voices, thus creating a kind of index of linear signs. Selected drawings of a more intimate character produced authentically in the natural environment include both records of the individual bird voices and the wholes reflecting the layering and intertwining of the songs of several species of song birds.
Olga Karlíková’s conceptual works place various natural phenomena and processes in direct connection with landscape, making its time present. She understood her work as a process taking place in a real time and space, directly linked with it, which is why the creative process can’t draw on memories or a sudden inspiration. Her perception and interpretation of natural phenomena resonating with universalism are close to the ideas of the Swiss philosopher and anthropologist Adolf Portmann and his neo-evolutionary findings published in the 1960s. Portmann stated as early as 1951 in his lecture “Time in the Life of Organisms” at the conference of the Eranos association: Each form of life is for us a shape which evolves not only in space but also in time. In a sense, living creatures are materialized time, like melodies. Life manifests itself in time shapes.