Inge Kosková / Flow

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.

23.02.2022 - 14.05.2022

Fait Gallery MEM, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno

Curators: Marie Štindlová a Lenka Vítková

Opening: 23. 2. 2022, 7 pm

Drawings,

natural as the smoke from the smouldering end of a burning stick.

Inge Kosková's drawings are characterised by subtlety and sensitive precision. With extraordinary virtuosity, she touches on ephemeral subjects such as rhythm and breath, records landscapes and music, and writes letters in non-existent scripts. The Flow exhibition showcases a more vigorous form of her drawings which manifest that even subtlety can be firm and powerful.

Inge Kosková lives in Olomouc

drawing

and breathing

her drawings have the most beautiful breaks

her drawings feature Czech forests and meadows, crushed grass by a pond

her drawings with mantras are happy wishes for the world

her drawings are her breath and perhaps also her spirit (of a kind jester)

Inge Kosková draws on her own, even though we can say that she belongs somewhere

Inge has been compared to Olga Karlíková who produced drawings as light as the feathers of birds whose sounds guided her hand

Inge has been compared to Václav Stratil, the old trickster

Inge has been compared to a few others (the circle of artists of the Olomouc drawing, as they are called)

Inge was often interpreted by Jiří Valoch when he used to stomp around at exhibition openings in pointy shoes

Inge's work is concentrated and balanced. She slowly cultivates what she has, and she has lots.

Inge sometimes draws as if she were writing letters

Inge sometimes draws

Inge Kosková is often associated with the circle of artists of the Olomouc drawing. However, her work has always been somewhat solitary. It was and is based on honest contemplation and the distillation of phenomena to the core. In the beginning, she created imaginative works referring to surrealism, gradually moving through figurative motifs with existential overtones to records of landscapes and a search for the order of nature in general. Over time, her drawing expression lost the narrative and verbal content in favour of various phenomena that are difficult to convey in words. Their common denominator is breath, rhythm, a break. The drawing expression is reduced to a simple black line and well-organised work with large white areas of paper. In her works inspired by nature, a similarity to script emerges, and this motif is developed in drawings inspired by the structure of letters and the laws of writing. This experience is further reflected in the works created to music. Another kind of record involves works recording bodily sensations and a series of drawings with mantras in which the artist covered the paper with concentrated drawings related to a circle while repeating a particular mantra. The selection of works for the MEM gallery is based on recent records of music, supplemented by several drawings with mantras and a large-scale drawing on the front wall.

When I look at Inge Kosková's delicate drawings, it is as if I was looking at materialized gestures, as if I was looking at a variant of a music score for the dance that Inge performed in her tree-shaded flat while listening to Janáček. Listening to music appears to be an excuse to allow her lifelong experience of music, rhythm, landscape, body and breath to be put on paper. The long drawing on the front wall originated in the gallery. We observed how ideas and movements were conserved in lines making up a stream that ran around the gallery whenever someone allowed it through their gaze.

Even small drawings after Janáček and Medek flow with the spontaneity and power of a river stream. It meanders and intensifies in robust drawings with mantras - concentrated records of meditation exercises produced in synchronicity with the artist's breath. A few precisely laid black lines on white sheets of paper in a white gallery.

Text: Marie Štindlová

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