Habima Fuchs / Matter in Eternity

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.

Habima Fuchs / Matter in Eternity

21.02.2024 - 04.05.2024

Fait Gallery MEM, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno

Curator: Šimon Kadlčák

Opening: 21st February, 7 pm

The whirling eruptions of energy discharges created matter by combining particles, the matter grew in volume and increased in size, filled space and started to produce shapes. Shapes of all forms and sizes were created which continued to change over time. Some shapes appeared unusually unstable, ephemeral and fleeting compared to others, while others in contrast appeared static and unchanging. The truth was, however, that there were also forms compared to which the ephemeral ones seemed stable, and also those compared to which the apparently static ones seemed to be in constant motion. Humans were among the forms that manifested in the course of this process (sometimes it is incorrectly said that it was at the end of it). Like everything else, they were created by stardust, elements ejected from star nuclei coalescing into larger wholes, an expression of a cosmic consciousness that started to explore itself. It seems that conscious matter (or materialized consciousness) predominantly perceives the surrounding world through contact with other matter. Where there is contact, mutual acquainting starts. Matter both reflects and emits light. Since matter and energy are the same,^{^[1]},light has become an extended tentacle of conscious matter. It is no longer necessary to touch directly to perceive, touching can be done at a distance.

Habima Fuchs, matter exploring itself, brings into the light-flooded hall of the Fait Gallery MEM objects, arranges them, divides the space with them, places them into correlations and balances them in a concentrated manner. For her, the exhibition is an opportunity to temporarily pause and fixate the current phase of her personal exploration of the world, as well as to present a fragmentary section of it to others in the form of a spatial record. The exhibition is a moment inviting a break from the usual work routine of kneading matter into shapes full of symbolic meanings, a possibility of reflection and sharing with others. The imagery of Habima Fuchs's works abounds in distinct motifs and associations which she presents to others for free confrontation with their own contexts and subsequent interpretation. In doing so, she trusts in mutual understanding. The roots of the images she works with grow out of the shared mycelium of a "collective information archive": its conscious levels consist of the accumulations of the experience of many generations of human life passed down over millennia in the form of images, books, thoughts and feelings..., and the unconscious ones in turn involve the billions of years of experience of organic life (in forms that people can always recognise but which, given their means of communication, they are only able to express through paraphrasing).

The artist’s current constellation is typified by the geometrical division of a particular space, airiness, leaving room for exploring space through movement, as well as for interpretation. The individually positioned elements create "neural nodes", local clusters of artefacts that determine the final possibilities of the audience's movement through the space. It is the relations of objects in space and its boundaries that enable us to become aware of it and experience it. However, if we want to move through space, we must always make use of its empty sections, avoiding obstacles, bypassing matter. This may remind us of the often neglected and not easily imagined fact that all matter chiefly contains empty space.^{^[2]} It is only the invisible interconnections, the energy interactions between them, that create the ultimate illusion of solidity and stability. The reality, however, is movement, constant rearrangement, processes of birth and decline, renewal and growth.

On a personal level, for Habima Fuchs organizing an exhibition is an opportunity to materialize, or visually invoke, an affirmation for (re?)establishing balance in no less than a cosmic sense. Balance implies symmetry, and symmetry implies a balanced symbiosis of birth and decline, a unity manifested in two ways. This is the principle of eternity, and we are matter, i.e. energy that rearranges itself, at one time it is this and at another time it is that, sometimes it is "big" and sometimes it is "small", sometimes its transformation lasts long and at other times it is hectic in nature, and despite the illusion of exclusive individual existence, only reciprocity (consisting of unique elements) is the continuous interconnection of everything in the spatial and temporal sense, of what we understand as “the world”.

^{^[1]} According to the equation E=MC².

^{^[2]} To be precise, it is 99.9999999999996 % of empty space compared to the proportion of matter constituting an atom.

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