The exhibition Embodiment of the Spiritual introduces seventy large scale reproductions of art pieces of artists who experienced certain mental disorders. Mental disorders and traumas are undoubtedly among the most serious obstacles to interpersonal communication, both for those suffering from the illness as well as those helplessly standing in front of an impermeable wall of silence. Anything that occasionally penetrates the wall is important for making contact. Making the contact is not only essential for the mentally ill, but it is also utterly inspiring as a vehicle for self-reflection for a person from the “outside”. For people with mental disorders, expressing themselves through art is one of the most worthwhile ways to get the message across the wall. This is the aim of part of the project called Parallel Worlds which, among other things, unites the artists represented in the exhibition called Embodiment of the Spiritual. Among them are Jaroslav Bílý, Hana Cimplová, Radek Deák, Lenka Fridrichová, Milan Jíša, Jan Knýbel, Zdeněk Košek, Lucie Muclingerová and Zdena Prokopová. The exhibition has been realized in cooperation with the nonprofit organization Kolumbus, an association of the beneficiaries of psychiatric care.
Each piece of art is a conundrum and the works of the mentally ill are an overarching set of conundrums, to help viewers to assess the meaning of their message. The artwork is, however, also a means of communication. Fully understanding the meaning is impossible, but in a certain way, it is paradoxically easier to get to the emotion behind the visual picture of the psychotic experience than it is to sense the emotional sources of the expressions of a “normal” artist. That is primarily due to the characteristic qualities of the creative expression of people with psychotic disorders – which is their sincerity and unaffectedness. That is why the works of the mentally ill can rightfully be classified among the works labeled by French term “art brut”.
This expression, first used in 1945 by French artist and essayist Jean Dubuffet, means “raw art”. Besides the works of psychotics, it includes the entire area of non-professional, even “uncultured,” art works. It refers to the works of outsiders, i.e., people either trained or untrained in art, who are in any case not trying to receive immediate recognition or financial recompense for their work. It’s pure self-expression since making art fulfills an urgent need in them to share their feelings and thoughts, and is not a way to make a living or receive social acclaim. It is that direct need for self-expression which gives the works of “art brut” their authenticity and intensity - the unaffectedness of expression and the power of their message.
The work of people with mental disorders was brought to the attention of art critics, psychiatrists and artists almost ninety years ago. It was the German psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn who in his book Artistry of the Mentally Ill (1922) delivered a simple yet, due to the prejudice of that time, unacceptable truth: “These pieces of art are creative attempts – that is what from the psychological point of view they have in common with “art”.” The courage of Prinzhorn’s act lies in the fact that accepting the works of the “insane” as having certain artistic qualities automatically allows a certain penetration of the boundaries between “madness” and “normality”.
Thus, it unveils the misunderstanding which causes the exclusion of the mentally ill from the social majority. The myths and prejudice about the alleged “inpermeability” of the boundaries between normality and mental illness (and the automatic harmfulness or even the danger of contact with the “insane”) in fact only contribute to further isolate people who are already socially disadvantaged.
The exhibition Embodiment of the Spiritual is therefore the most natural way to start a dialogue because the art works enable us to penetrate behind the wall without using words, or, if you will, find a hole in the fence of this particular group’s social isolation. The blowups of their artistic creations are therefore installed on the unprettified fences in the Kateřinská Garden – and are in fact themselves symbolic openings through which we can look into the inner world of the mentally ill.
Jan Knýbel (*1978)
Jan expresses himself through meticulous, illusive painting, attempting to execute the utmost suggestion of the real three-dimensional space. In this way, he brings visual expression back to baroque or academic painting (similarly to some artists of the 20th century who thus responded to the avant-garde abstractivism). Jan says that his intention is to mediate topical contents with the help of postmodern “mixture” of form means of the past. – His themes exceed the obvious inspiration by ancient myths or by sci-fi issues and they develop into subjective visions whose content is original and highly disturbing. His black and white drawing of a split human head with an animal body has become the symbol of the Parallel Worlds project. Jan, suffering an anxiety-depressive disorder, uses a pseudonym of Ioannes Iacobus Ignatianus Igneus and claims his “expulsion from the human society”.
Radek Deák (*1984)
Radek creates his colorful pastel art works upon inspiration by symbolic character of ancient legends and, in a totally novel way, he focuses on interpreting his own imagination within an organically heraldic framework. – In his work, the very ancient mythical monsters (Noh the Bird) metamorphose into familiar bearers of quite contemporary human forms, be it figures or faces.
Using a strict heraldic configuration, the artist elevates his scenes to sovereign symbols whose ambiguous outcome lends them mysterious urgency that is characteristic of sign systems of ancient civilizations. It is thanks to consistent connecting of ancient sign forms with totally topical, subjectively motivated contents that the artist achieves such outcome.
Lenka Fridrichová (*1978)
In her figurative oil paintings, Lenka uses meaning-building functions of a simplifying contraction-symbol, characteristic of significant art works of visual modernism that she, however, conceives in a completely unique way. Within expressions and looks her portraits show, we can detect desire to initiate a relation with the outer world. The artist says that she considers her art work to be a way to give its viewers “a part of herself” – and thus, within such active communication, she could find the meaning of her life.
Lenka received visual art training (at Textile Industry High School) and she worked professionally in the visual art field. Her displayed works originate in the time when she already had to battle with attacks of schizophrenia. These works are different from her preceding art work in their very immediacy and urgency with which she links to the broken ties with the reality.
Hana Cimplová (*1956)
Hana’s encaustic technique (painting with hot colored wax) at first sight brings about an impression that her final art works are decoratively abstract pieces. But in fact, their forms not only offer aesthetically harmonious scale of hues and colors, but most of all, they offer a semantically motivated possibility of spontaneous discovering of figures, objects, stories and landscapes that mingle in an endless line into other and yet more imaginative visions.
So, here, visual abstraction paradoxically serves to awaken totally concrete - almost figurative imagination.
The artist’s original profession is that of a medical nurse.
Zdeněk Košek (*1949)
In his works Zdeněk takes an inspiration from modern art, for example, from Van Gogh and the experience of expressionism. He originally worked as a typographer and visual artist in a regional Cultural Centre. He uses form, obviously influenced by visual art training even though autodidactic, paradoxically, for the purpose of totally unique contents expression: for instance, his ambiguous transferring Van Gogh-like brutality of colors and brush strokes into a painting that depicts a housing estate with a ‘trabant’ car, brings about a truly fantastic impression. We can detect the same ambiguity in his portraits as well as his visions that balance on the brink of eroticism and horror.
The artist has written a book Jak se dělá počasí (How The Weather Is Made) in which he positions himself into being “the master of the weather on the planet Earth”; this particular aspect also demonstrates itself in the artist’s drawings crowded with meteorological symbols.
Since 1983 Zdeněk has had more than ten solo exhibitions at different places, amongst others Tokyo, Paris and New York.
Milan Jíša (*1958)
Meticulously realistic form of Milan’s drawings shows his engineer-architect’s background. The excellently executed technique of stereoscopic perspective that is used in architectonic drawing, however, acquires a new meaning significance in Milan’s art work for it becomes an instable set piece of disturbing storylines that are sometimes reminiscent of dream scenes and at other times they are reminiscent of symbolical codes, bearing ambiguous messages. For example, in the drawing of a female violinist, the artist brings into an open contrast the violinist’s concentrated calm with threateningly crumbling down architecture behind her back (not even mentioning the urgent suspicion – as if the very playing full of concentration were the innocent cause of the destructive impulse to dance given to the motionless matter). – Emphasis on contrast of meaning is characteristic of all Milan’s art work and shows the artist’s consciously ironical attitude to reality.
Zdena Prokopová (*1980)
Zdena develops image-provoking storylines that are executed in a completely original figurative style created by a play of simplified lines. The artist herself calls it “ornamental graphics”. She also combines drawing with assemblage of forms that are cut out of plastic sheets, while using computer graphics in her color compositions. – So, to capture inner contents, the artist does not hesitate to use technology, yet technology remains a sole means to steady a desired meaning. In her diverse, mostly slightly ironical variations, Zdena follows complexities of interpersonal communication, especially relations between a man and a woman. She has been drawing since a very early age and her creative art has helped her profoundly since she was taken ill with a schizophrenic disorder that had occurred after difficult life experiences. She is aware of the fact that her illness does not have to necessarily be a kind of a curse, but it can also be a rich source of imagination that enriches a person from within.
Daniel Horák (*1975)
Daniel’s visually simple pen, crayon, pastel and other similar media drawings show that this Slovak artist possesses an essential want of creative expressing of suggestive visions. He uses figurative drawing that reveals seemingly simple scenes which however conceal powerful emotion within themselves. The artist’s theme is a woman, always placed within a symbolically characteristic constellation with other women, mythical beings, animals, architecture or plants. Each of these constellations seems to be an individual symbol of adoration of a woman, representing a subjective understanding of embodiment of happiness or fatality. The fascinating impression these visions bring about stems from an apparent confrontation between excitement and calm, female erotic sovereignty and a plain nature of feelings.
Alena Richterová (*1956)
Alena depicts landscapes and still-life in her drawings executed with combined techniques. She has been interested in visual arts since her childhood. Her craftsmanship background (forming plastic materials) helps her to realize two-dimensional formations of her motifs that thus bring about an interesting and dynamic impression. However, from a formative level this dynamics suggestively develops into a subject level: a still-life with fruits somehow spontaneously turns into a scene with water animals, while at the same time, a landscape by the river appears to be an outer, seismographic record of inner, subjective “earthquake”…
The artist says that she creates “what she feels and what influences and motivates her” while trying to build up her own style. As Alena puts it, she can “find herself and she can hide, but she can also get lost” in her art work.
Lucie Muclingerová (*1979)
Lucie has been interested in handcraft activities and especially drawing since her childhood. Due to her completing jeweler-engraver training at Industrial Foundry High School, she has chosen to use etching and linocut techniques in her art. Using these techniques she depicts very simple plant or figurative motifs that resemble illustrations in botanical books or books of fairytales. The artist often concentrates her motifs’ dynamic essence into trajectories from which geometric-like compositions rise spontaneously. In this way, Lucie reveals an experience – that making real elements ornamental, which typically leads to visual abstraction, has its roots in the concrete reality and reciprocal energetic relations amongst its elements.
Jaroslav Bílý (*1953)
Jaroslav’s art that he creates with tempera, oil pastels, water color, crayon and assemblage is focused on architecture, nature motifs and landscape and their dissolving within gestic “abstraction”.
In its expression, his art work belongs to a space between two poles – a strict orthogonal geometry and a lively tangle of lines, color and forms. The resulting structures, from which like phantoms sometimes emerge silhouettes of particular objects, show emphasis the artist puts on inner life of seemingly motionless arrangement of forms. In the artist’s images there seems to be vigorous agitation that rules over the forms – agitation that does not really yield to aesthetical canons, but rather to magnetic incantations which let ornaments of feverish states repose in the calm of a composition.
|