Anna Hulačová
Originalita tvorby Anny Hulačové spočívá v preciznosti, rafinované smyslnosti a srozumitelnosti výtvarného jazyka, ale především ve způsobu, jakým oživuje středověkou ikonografii, imaginativní svět lidového umění, slavností, mýtů, rituálů a náboženské liturgie. Hulačová do tohoto světa nenahlíží z bezpečného povzdálí. Zůstává prostě jeho obyčejnou a bytostnou součástí, doslova živým podnětem stojícím v plném světle. Nejen jako performer svých sdílených soukromých obřadů, ale především jako inovativní sochařka s restaurátorskou praxí chovající hlubokou úctu k tradičním řemeslům a k práci s přírodními materiály. Anna Hulačová s přirozenou lehkostí a v dobrém slova smyslu ignoruje normy současného statusu sochařství, zvyky vštípené uměleckou výchovou, ale i samotnou tradici figurální plastiky – především té dřímající posledních sto let ve stinném ústraní moderny.
Figurální sochařství se pradávno stalo intelektuální hrou a soukromou záležitostí lhostejnou k náboženskému duchu. Sakrální figurace ve své progresivní podobě snad bohužel zcela zanikla nebo jen sublimovala do jiných světských forem, ale z plastik Anny Hulačové nebo z jejích mnohých živých akcí čiší kromě upřímného pochybování a pochmurných úvah na toto téma i jakási vášnivá a neposkvrněná jistota. Ta se může zdát poněkud manýristickou, ale přece jen se jedná o jistotu a pro dnešek velmi vzácné přesvědčení, že sochařství jest ve své podstatě výhradně náboženským uměním.
- I didn´t get back to you but I´ll start with the sculptures at the weekend.00:00:17.597
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- I´ve already started one... I´ve left it with the boys.00:00:27.201
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- You don´t mind, do you?00:00:32.036
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- What I find fascinating about figural sculpture00:00:36.931
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- is the fact that in the past and until recently it represented the society.00:00:40.308
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- It represented political and religious ideology.00:00:48.809
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- Nowadays, when all this no longer counts,00:00:57.869
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- and society is critical towards politics and religion,00:01:01.047
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- I´m interested in working with a representative of what existed in the past,00:01:06.522
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- what defined ideology and social ideals,00:01:16.340
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- as was typical of statues.00:01:22.333
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- And I compare it with the present.00:01:24.121
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- This is my monster chamber.00:01:30.369
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- Perhaps it´s better without light.00:01:33.780
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- I can show you a mask from a performance.00:01:37.517
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- You can put it on your head and you look through these tiny holes.00:01:56.616
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- It´s all made of wood, so it´s heavy.00:02:05.057
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- And you feel it´s really cruel, the mask deforms your face.00:02:07.819
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- You really feel like the mask.00:02:20.714
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- I was influenced a lot by Sergei Paradjanov, an Armenian film director,00:03:02.415
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- a friend of Tarkovski,00:03:17.001
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- he made really beautiful performance-like videos using different objects,00:03:21.930
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- very vernacular and mystical,00:03:32.821
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- with a strong visual and acoustic impact.00:03:37.247
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- He was in prison and I think he was a genius.00:03:45.492
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- When this place was still empty, so I made a kind of installation here.00:04:01.409
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- I placed a head of an owl on the table and a head with a photo of an old statue.00:04:06.826
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- The owl was looking inside the human head,00:04:18.637
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- I called the installation "Close Encounters of my Own Kind".00:04:26.953
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- I felt the owl and the head reminded me of a kind of extraterrestrial subject.00:04:35.943
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- I also used the head of Buddha and an extraterrestrial,00:04:43.619
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- that was the second dialogue,00:04:47.081
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- and then there was another installation, there are still some traces on the wall,00:04:50.877
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- I fixed an imitation of an electric flex on the wall leading to a socket,00:05:08.093
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- but the flex was made of clay, it was a kind of decoration imitating flex.00:05:14.459
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- Owls stare at you in a strange way,00:05:27.114
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- and they are wise in a mysterious way,00:05:34.443
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- so there was a connection between the owl and the extraterrestrial,00:05:42.543
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- the alien has huge eyes, that´s the way people imagine them,00:05:46.176
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- we regard them as highly intelligent creatures with huge brains and eyes,00:05:51.297
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- a suppressed mouth and nose, creatures more intelligent than us.00:06:01.994
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- I started with symbolical portraits, the first was the well-known Grandmother,00:06:21.403
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- I wanted to use material which would symbolize the personality.00:06:31.166
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- The material I used was not supposed to suppress the portrait.00:06:38.133
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- In the end it resembled more a red Indian than Grandmother, from the realistic viewpoint.00:06:42.717
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- First, I was more interested in the material than a faithful portrait.00:06:55.040
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- I wanted to use material that would express00:07:03.746
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- the sort of lush, juicy character of the depicted person.00:07:09.220
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- I sometimes make, it depends on my mood,00:07:26.956
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- either romantic characters or beastly ones.00:07:32.351
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- The cake decorating kit I use is in fact brutal,00:07:41.499
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- it underlines the structure through its decorative character,00:07:46.301
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- thanks to the structure which it creates and the form is more interesting for me in many ways.00:07:55.321
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- For me its a kind of folklore technique.00:08:04.467
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- I also like accentuated contrasts,00:08:08.239
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- for example dry concrete with something that looks wet.00:08:13.560
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- Decorativeness of things is not really natural,00:08:25.123
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- especially when it´s not absolutely perfect.00:08:35.699
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- I like when you have to struggle to achieve something,00:08:40.701
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- and also when you perhaps have no basics,00:08:55.326
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- and it is simply done from one´s heart, it´s all a bit off the road.00:08:58.823
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- So that´s what I like.00:09:08.243
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- I like Gutfreund´s work very much, not his Cubist period,00:09:22.670
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- but his civil ceramic statues.00:09:28.087
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- He was a pioneer in this field.00:09:30.954
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- He created the Cubist statue and then all of a sudden00:09:35.686
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- began making attractive, ordinary, vernacular statues of children and workers.00:09:42.249
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- The statues of miners are real symbols of hard work,00:09:53.225
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- miners work deep underground, in mines,00:10:01.564
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- and so they really represent drudgery.00:10:09.734
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- I simply gave them a sort of "cake-drill"00:10:15.869
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- which is a kind of female symbol00:10:18.313
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- reminding me of sacral ornaments,00:10:26.128
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- or sacral objects, it´s a bit like the Nativity scenes.00:10:35.115
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- I also quite like the theme of the Madonna,00:10:43.976
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- because it is also a vernacular subject.00:10:47.186
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- In the Middle Ages, in the Baroque period, the Madonna was a symbol of the ideal,00:10:52.826
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- not only in the religious sense but it is linked to humanity in general.00:11:04.926
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- In the 17th century Christ was apparently not represented00:11:14.354
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- as often as the Madonna00:11:23.340
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- because people felt she was close to them,00:11:24.810
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- for them she symbolized the most spiritual principle00:11:26.956
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- of existence, through the love of the mother and child,00:11:36.285
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- more than the sacrifice of the mother.00:11:41.611
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- You have to touch the drawing because it is plastic.00:11:52.689
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- You can´t see the wax, you have to touch it to feel the layer of wax.00:11:56.180
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- It´s like Easter eggs which we decorate first with wax and then add colours.00:12:12.195
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- These are sketches for statues, some of them obviously aesthetic,00:12:22.751
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- I made them during the period of childbed.00:12:30.983
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- I try to work continuously, in the evenings, whenever I have time,00:12:37.480
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- I enjoy it, it´s a kind of female work.00:12:49.454
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- Decorating paper instead of Easter eggs.00:12:55.039
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- For me it becomes a kind of universe,00:13:02.393
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- some sort of inner universe with events from the sketches for the statues,00:13:15.172
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- and the environment with the Easter-egg technique, so that´s what I like.00:13:23.408
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- The cosmonauts, colleagues, stage an operation in the universe,00:13:33.321
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- one messes about with the other´s abdomen00:13:39.381
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- but inside the stomach instead of the guts there is a suit again,00:13:41.752
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- including a tie, inside the cosmonaut there is a normal businessman,00:13:47.578
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- who wears a kind of uniform under the space suit.00:13:55.881
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- When you try to get inside of something you always come upon another layer00:14:02.667
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- of something which is a surface.00:14:10.576
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- Perhaps this is the same in science,00:14:14.189
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- when you examine the microcosmos you always come upon the macrocosmos.00:14:20.059
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- The figures are like symbolic gestures00:14:27.778
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- referring to the Bible, like the gesture of Doubting Thomas.00:14:33.843
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- The title of this one is Zero Gravity.00:14:43.878
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- Not having hands, the figure seems to be freed from gravity.00:14:46.782
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- Hands are a symbol of human weight, of gravity.00:14:57.238
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- Because we use hands to create the material world around us,00:15:11.738
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- so they become tools of the material world00:15:21.751
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- and they are also a spiritual tool.00:15:29.808
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- I was inspired by the title of a book by Václav Řezáč - The Black Light.00:15:43.892
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- There´s a character who is in the background but influences everything around.00:15:49.540
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- The character is hidden but manipulates the people around,00:15:59.170
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- influences seemingly uninfluencable things,00:16:02.321
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- "casts light" on events or influences events.00:16:05.299
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- When I compare it with black light in photographs00:16:12.415
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- for example clouds during a storm create a dark background00:16:20.835
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- and an object in the foreground will be lighter,00:16:25.070
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- it will stand out more against the dark background.00:16:31.438
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- A similar principle, a cosmic principle,00:16:35.757
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- I don´t mean black light but black matter or energy,00:16:40.607
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- and at the same time galaxies or different constellations, which are visible,00:16:44.132
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- what is visible is exactly what is accentuated thanks to the black matter,00:16:50.750
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- thanks to the dark energy.00:16:58.811
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- The dark energy which is connected with it00:17:01.770
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- is also what surrounds us, permeates our bodies and all objects,00:17:03.570
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- the miniature particles now trying to catch on things..00:17:11.447
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- I find this interesting, we´re 100% sure it exists,00:17:17.001
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- it´s a part of us, but it can´t be captured00:17:23.857
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- because the consistence is of remote origin00:17:31.592
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- and the particles permeate everything00:17:36.360
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- that´s why it´s difficult for humans to capture.00:17:43.352