Interview

The beginning of your oeuvre can be seen in the early realisation that you accomplished at the Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in 1991.               It encompassed, in a nutshell, your fundamental approaches reflecting your relation to material, structure, rhythm and composition. You even drew a huge portal composed of triangles inscribed in circles. Can you still recall the background of your considerations at that time?
I remember it very well. In particular, it was the ambiance in the ateliers of the post-1989 academy. After a short period of searching, I found my own work programme and implemented it. I was above all stimulated by architecture, its components and details. It was by analysing architectural elements that I was led to develop the approaches mentioned above. I also remember the lectures given by Professor Josef Hlaváček which were greately inspirational for me. I acquainted myself with the writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer, Erwin Panofsky, Pierre Francastel, Martin Heidegger and others. The drawing that formed part of my Master’s thesis was borrowed from the book Geometrical Harmony of Historic Architecture in Slovakia by Alojz Struhár, which I discovered during my secondary school years. At that time, I felt everything very intensely, and there was a multitude of influences.
For example, my journey to Italy. Visiting Herculaneum was an extraordinarily strong experience. There was also a background inspiration from archaeology. It was a period of uncovering different layers.

That book by Struhár, which has been all but forgotten, could have revealed a lot to you. In those years, it was hard to find books on internal geometrical systems which inspired many artists and guided their artworks. I have a feeling that an objectivistic, super-individual aspect became a permanent component of your expression. Is your work based on the incessant tension between transpersonal criteria and inner experience?
Yes, I think it is. There is a certain detached view or an objectivist stance. I became aware of that quite soon. It might have been the reason why my work differed from that of my fellow students. I remember a rewarding experience I gained during my time at the École des Beaux Arts in Nice. It was an excellent opportunity to get my way of thinking and creating compared with that of other students. I felt an affinity with their thoughts. I believe that this moment was crucial for my future achievements. As an artist, I am
a bit blended into the background, which perfectly suits me.

In your installations from the 1990’s you began to put emphasis on the apparent and the concealed—the viewer could not simply see, or could just catch a glimpse of what was hidden behind a wall. The chinks in the wall let in the light and later also sounds. Were you interested in the employment of the installation components that are used in exhibitions?

In how to get beyond an object that serves, for instance, to hang paintings on..., but you worked with the object itself, using even that what is normally out of sight. The apparent and the concealed are both linked to the uncovering of layers. In the early nineties, I was dealing with that issue in objects that were often situated on the floor. In 1998, I first
employed a partition as a component of my own installation exhibited at the gallery Die Aktualität des Schönen There, I erected several partitions across the whole gallery so as to cover all the windows. Thus, their existence was revealed only by the light coming in through the chinks in the partitions, by sounds and flowing air. That which so far concerned merely individual objects began to be played out in the gallery as a whole. One of the partitions stayed in the gallery for good and served as an exhibition panel.

 
The work of yours that seems to have most impressed the public is that in which you employed aluminium ventilation ducts and which won the Jindřich Chalupecký Award in 2000. Subsequently, you used the ducts to make some more works and at last you integrated them into the Memorial for the Fighters and Victims of the Fight for the Freedom of the Country, a public monument that you co-created for the city of Liberec. Can you retrospectively explain what aroused your interest in this purely technical equipment? Have you ever made the original purpose of the ducts part of your artwork?
In realising this type of project I took into consideration both gallery interiors and various outdoor public spaces. I often installed the ducts on the interface separating the inner and the outer space: in open windows, or—as was the case in the Trade Fair Palace in Prague—in the entrance zone separating the exhibition halls from the external communication section. The ducts were oriented from the interior (‘architectonic void’) towards the corridor by which visitors entered the exhibition hall. They thusaccentuated the boundary via which the air and the light were coming in (the air, in these installations, flows in the same way as in the air-conditioning systems that are part of the technical equipment of houses).

Progressively, you began to divert the technical components used in galleries from their usual purpose. Lights, dismounted from ceilings and placed on the floor, illuminated empty walls. What was a mere means of perceiving the exhibits thus became an exhibit itself. Did this way of thinking mean a turning point for you?
Yes, it did. Similarly, in my installation at the Václav Špála Gallery I turned the situation that you mention inside out. That which was hidden behind the partition, all of a sudden became apparent. I radically transformed the spatial layout. What used to be on the ceiling ended up installed on the floor. I applied the same method in a few other installations. This approach influenced, for instance, the final form of the Liberec memorial. I think that my experience from such a spatial transformation had an impact on the evolution
of my work.

We ought to mention yet another dimension of your installations: the issue of sound. There is no way to render it present by reproducing the installations in printed media. The readers need to read the description to learn about the presence of sound. When did you start to work with sound? How is it linked to your installations? Did the idea of using sound occur to you at the same time as the ‘material’ rendition or subsequently?
I first employed a sound or, rather, a noise in the installation for the Gallery Die Aktualität des Schönen The noise emanated from an air-handling system concealed behind a partition. The humming of the ventilators rendered present the flow of air coming in through the windows disguised by the partition. Without seeing the windows, one could feel the draught of the wind. In another installation, presented at the Pecka Gallery, I used a soundless video recording which did not permit any suspicion of any airflow. Yet the ventilators and microphones within the installation made it possible to hear and physically feel the moving air. Sound is an important component of my installations. I never use it separately.
It adds another dimension to my work and is related to the issue of ‘disclosing different layers’ of meaning. In my videos, I use sound tracks more or less in a random manner. Sometimes, I adjust the sound digitally.

A question imposes itself: to what extent was your long-term lingering on the edge of the real responsible for your urge for a turnabout? To what extent was it responsible for your need of an opposite world permeating your own, as is illustrated by the introduction of erotic videos and photographs into your work?
Did they serve as a deliberate contrast to pure geometrical shapes?
Yes, an urge for a turnabout, that’s aptly said. That urge was preceded by an experience of searching for new spatial relations. I was allured by the transformation of content and in particular of form. The erotic and pornographic video sequences I chose worked extremely well. In hindsight, it seems to me that the two approaches—despite their formal contrast—are not so distant from one another. It is certain that this theme has not been fully exhausted. In any case, it is quite liberating to have made that experience and to know that I can do an 180 degree turn in my work. 

What I feel was an important turn in your work is the 2004 exhibition XYZ held in the Municipal Cultural Houses of České Budějovice, in which you deployed light projections that are in fact strictly immaterial interventions. All of a sudden, there were constantly changing colourful stripes, light spots, and moving structures. Did you consider this exhibition as a step further on your journey beyond physical objects, a step that could have resulted in your recent work dedicated to Zdeněk
Pešánek and presented at GASK in Kutná Hora?
As far as the installation XYZ is concerned, my aim was to transform the interior of the gallery solely by light which partially penetrated from one room to another. The projectors were not pointed at walls but at those architectonic partitions separating individual halls. That boundary between architectural interiors and exteriors was also thematised in my installation Project Kobližná 2 (Brno, 2000), in which I highlighted the boundary by using air ducts. At GASK, a similar problem was resolved by means of light and artificial fog. The boundary was disappearing and reappearing according to the amount of fog which itself depended on outside conditions (wind and the like). In this particular context,
the exhibition held in České Budějovice meant a substantive intermediate stage.