JASANSKÝ – POLÁK
MICHAL KALHOUS
ALENA KOTZMANNOVÁ
MARIE KRATOCHVÍLOVÁ
MARKÉTA OTHOVÁ
& JIŘÍ KOVANDA
THE OTHER SIDE OF A PHOTOGRAPH
I’ll give brownie points to something like Čert 180 g, Loupák pes 60 g, or perhaps Bez omáčky
THE FRAGMENTS OF SETS / THE SELECTION FROM THE FAIT GALLERY COLLECTION
ONE MOMENT / Collector's cycle of important private collections
Part two: FOR YOUR EYES ONLY / Jiří Valoch´s collection
COLLECTOR'S CYCLE OF IMPORTANT PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
THE OTHER SIDE OF A PHOTOGRAPH
23.10.2024 - 20.12.2024
Fait Gallery, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Curator: Denisa Kujelová
Opening: 23rd October, 7 pm
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.
Karel Adamus / Minimal Metaphors
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Fait Gallery, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno
Curator: Denisa Kujelová
Special opening day: October 8, 4 pm–9 pm
The conceptual approach first came to the fore in the work of Karel Adamus in 1974, in an extensive cycle entitled Minimal Metaphors exploring the relations between verbal or visual elements and their subsequent reassessed meaning in the title. The artist developed this distinctive type of conceptual poetry from 1976 onwards in the Copies series in which he, apart from a play with the terms “original” and “copy,” also articulated or modified the meaning of the original work by means of watercolour and drawing.
The theme of Minimal Metaphors created on the common A4 format is the relationship between a typewritten title and a subject of a poem, expressed with the use of a typewriter and a minimalist drawing, an assemblage or the colour and material properties of paper. Verbal metaphors are the most plentifully represented in this impressive cycle; their material is words where the semantic nature is born by both the signifier and the signified. The relationship between these two components produces a metaphor, i.e. a relationship on the basis of an analogy which the artist presents to the recipient on whose active collaboration strong emphasis is laid in the final execution of the work. The majority of these verbal metaphors go back to the aesthetics of typewritten letters that the artist used in his previous prolific phase of visual poetry, and are thus exclusively executed in typewritten form. However, there are also several poems working with a handwritten text, the stamping technique close to stamp art, poems-drawings and drawings working with “zero experience” in a maximum reduction of the elements employed.
In the following Copies series closely linked with Minimal Metaphors, and sometimes even formally attached to it, the relationship between the title and the subject of a poem, between the signifying component and the signified component, be it a text or a picture, a key element of this part of Adamus’s oeuvre, is accentuated even more. However, to get a full picture, it is also necessary to study other aspects of the work. While the Minimal Metaphors series is limited, with a few exceptions, to the ordinary A4 format, with Copies the format was enlarged in an equal proportion in order to demonstrate the size of the originals.
Subject Poems and Poems – Objects are also based on preset and consciously created associative links, inducing in the viewer a transfer of meaning expected by the artist. The meaning is often anchored in the title which makes up an integral part of the work and leads the observer in a direction set by the artist. In view of this, the frequently voiced connection with ready made art appears incorrect.
Adamus’s art characterised by concentrated communication with minimalized visual expression and work with actually non-artistic means is in this case not a purely intellectual construct on a rational base; nonetheless, its main subject is lyrical stimuli rooted in his inherently poetic nature. This is also illustrated by the fact that Adamus consistently refers to his works including objects as poems. Karel Adamus as a visual poetry artist was introduced to the general public in the early 1970s by the art theorist and artist Jiří Valoch on whose essays this text is based. Valoch also included Adamus in the so-called Brno Circle, along with other artists working on the periphery of the art scene. The main feature shared by these artists was the conceptualization of art, the accent on visual and experimental poetry and the processuality of their work.
The process character of drawing started to manifest itself in Adamus’s art in 1980 in the Flosages cycle. Although chronologically they rank with Minimal Metaphors and to a large extent are also metaphorical, these works can’t be classified with Minimal Metaphors due to their completely different structure and point of departure. The Flosages series consists of sequences of mostly connected lines which are of different thickness but are always in monochrome black pencil of different hardness, or an ink felt-tip pen. They always culminate in one line in colour, and there exist different time intervals between the drawings of the individual black lines (weeks, months but also years). The closing of the growth process with a colour line which gave the cycle its name symbolizes flower (flos in Latin). Despite the fact that Flosages have different shapes, they typically show a repeatedly connected line the phases of which take place in different time periods, and many of them are frozen in the process of growth, awaiting the next phase or the final stage - flower.
