Jaromír Novotný
Jaromír Novotný is reassessing the classical potential of the transformation and the isolation of the media of painting from the practice of representational imagery, and yet his work is still full of surprises. This artist develops his work in cycles, where the carefully composed scores always seem, to me, to be only a temporary solution rather than something incomplete. At the same time, I am fascinated by the strength of the sensuality in his work, the tactility and intimacy of, in particular, his work on paper. Because of the specific format, the painting technique, the purist abstract thinking, as well as his remarkable ingenuity in installation, it is possible to perceive Novotny’s paintings, above all, physically. This consideration, given the current form of contemporary Czech painting, is in itself revelatory.
Novotný not only works with the symbolic media of painting as many other artists already do, but he is interested in the actual special nature of the material – the essence of the preparation for painting, the history of the working method, the principals of chance, or the quality of the technological defects. While many others have also found this an attractive region to explore, Novotny, in contrast, quite openly and deliberately keeps a close watch on the fairly strict evaluation criteria about how a painting should not look. His careful supervision eliminates everything that could be considered redundant due to semantics or it’s decorative, visual information. The artist prefers to rely on the repeated constants of psychological perception and a minimum of expression, whose form determines the technological logic and compositional deduction. Even if it is not apparent at first glance, Novotny works both very intensively and effectively with color, respectively with its automatic derivatives, such as in the form of adopting the black and white tones of photography, or the use of standard printing ink colors. His spectral light drawings – photograms – have a pure painterly character. They are created through the even exposure of photographic paper in the developing emulsion bath; you can even see where the photographic paper has been folded to accommodate it in the relatively small developing tray.
Jaromír Novotný’s most recent exhibitions introduce the result of his ongoing reflection. I personally find this, in the best sense, extremely provoking. In part, the artist remains completely indifferent to the possibilities of any imagery. Everything basically happens in the tightly packed vacuum of the closed surface; there is no chance of anything unwanted seeping in from the outside. And just as importantly, the intentionally broken connection goes hand in hand with his relatively intense work method. Jaromir Novotny is able to fulfill an exceptional assumption: that the painted or photographic resolution of the image can be seen as a completely communicable and appealing gesture, even when everything is done in the name of the desire not to show anything. For a painter, or a photographer, it seems to be a pleasant task to be able to meticulously express this apparent paradox as he does here, with a sense for maximum detail.
Michal Pěchouček
- What to say... Well...00:00:12.329
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- I like working with things that have their place and borders given.00:00:17.130
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- This is a print process reduced ad absurdum to a roller and paint.00:00:36.557
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- Nothing else remained there...00:00:44.529
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- But to me, it has a lot to do with the print process.00:00:47.144
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- At the moment I work with offset paint.00:00:51.827
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- All of a sudden it's thick and oily,00:00:57.001
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- it doesn't run, but I have to roll it00:01:03.843
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- with the roller in a quite demanding physical captivation.00:01:08.017
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- The process is really tiring, because I don't dilute the paint,00:01:15.699
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- I leave it thick and until you roll00:01:20.855
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- a continuous layer you get pretty exhausted.00:01:23.621
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- It looks like a trace of another process, not the painting one.00:01:32.661
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- When you roll it with a bad foam roller for 15 crowns00:01:39.916
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- and it takes two hours, then I feel ad absurdum like00:01:51.298
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- a weird, slowed printing machine which takes two hours to produce this.00:01:58.684
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- If you want to see the way it was made00:02:06.440
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- or see some traces of the process,00:02:09.672
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- you have to use only little amount of the paint00:02:15.304
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- so that it comes out step by step.00:02:19.808
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- Of course it's possible to take a wet roller00:02:23.537
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- and run it over, but it doesn't make it interesting then, I guess.00:02:27.921
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- If I used a standard paint roller, there wouldn't be these stripes00:02:36.593
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- and the echoes of the edge.00:02:42.089
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- That's generally the reason why I do it.00:02:52.123
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- Or generally for many people it's the reason for making art.00:02:58.052
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- When it appears, you're surprised00:03:04.249
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- and delighted something happened, something astonishing and a bit new,00:03:07.384
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- well, the novelty should be taken with a pinch of salt.00:03:25.916
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- There is a frottage, I use the panels,00:03:31.905
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- it's connected here, by the rabbet,00:03:36.787
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- the protrusion, and this is the outcome.00:03:43.484
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- Although it has got an exact compositional solution,00:03:48.362
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- the chance still plays a key role so it can't00:04:02.315
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- be referred to an orthodox geometry.00:04:06.443
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- Here on the stripe, the hair is repeated...00:04:13.467
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- Well it's on canvas as a residue of traditional painting means.00:04:20.362
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- But I don't mind it and I discovered it would be nice00:04:31.156
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- to leave the canvas free and unstretched.00:04:36.484
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- It looks a bit like a print, well it's a print but00:04:40.128
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- it looks a bit like a xerox copy or something printed out by a machine.00:04:48.594
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- And I feel it should be supported by not stretching it.00:04:53.896
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- But I make use of paper as well.00:05:03.715
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- I have some of them over there...00:05:08.091
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- The paint started to come out owing to00:05:20.790
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- some dirt or something appearing in the material.00:05:27.615
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- For example the primed canvas isn't white,00:05:36.212
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- the black pigments are various,00:05:40.108
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- they are not identical and all this makes the colours different.00:05:43.846
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- I started to work with a photographic paper,00:05:49.857
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- which is black and white, but after certain00:05:53.729
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- treatment it gives out colour...00:05:56.347
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- I was interested in the way the colour had appeared.00:06:01.114
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- The colour just appeared.00:06:05.764
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- As I spoke before about the given facts,00:06:09.110
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- here the colour is given, I don't have to come up with it00:06:13.547
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- or decide on the colour I would use.00:06:16.502
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- It's something emerging from the material, a kind of experiment.00:06:20.223
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- But I really like it looks like a postcard a bit,00:06:25.367
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- something finished you just grab. I was just testing it,00:06:31.339
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- but at the same time it's a finished little thing.00:06:35.248
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- Something comes off and something doesn't.00:06:41.751
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- I can't find the good ones...00:06:45.935
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- The colour of the photographic paper is violet - pink - brown or something,00:06:49.425
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- so the paintings took these colours over00:06:56.728
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- and it was the first noticeable change of the colour.00:07:01.937
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- It recalled my printing past and it was evident,00:07:11.487
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- that CMYK was the right option as the colour shades00:07:15.522
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- are clearly given and ready for use.00:07:19.997
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- Of course I suspected the magenta would be perceived00:07:30.687
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- with the intentions of a civilizational banality.00:07:33.661
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- The colour is quite crazy.00:07:45.642
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- It might have been a personal therapy to bear00:07:48.173
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- having two or three square metres of00:07:53.279
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- this awful colour hanging in front of me.00:07:57.524
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- This remained from my apprentice years,00:08:00.856
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- this colour is from00:08:05.250
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- It looks like this, when you remove the crust.00:08:18.977
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- The offset paints grow pale, black is good, it sort of lasts.00:08:25.452
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- Also the pigment is quite stable.00:08:31.716
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- But the worst is yellow, then cyan, magenta, black, in this order...00:08:36.162
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- I tried to replace the magenta by offset oil one,00:08:45.030
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- because UMTON started to produce a limited edition of magenta...00:08:52.453
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- Would you mind if it faded out?00:09:01.838
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- Well, I don't know.00:09:05.353
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- I guess it's quite nice that the process continues somehow.00:09:09.313
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- When you work with such specific material00:09:16.862
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- on which the emotion from the picture depends...00:09:27.256
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- Now I'll digress a bit...00:09:36.252
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- I guess when you know the way it was made,00:09:38.476
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- that it's not an oil but printing ink,00:09:44.028
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- the resulting perception is different then.00:09:47.388
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- When I work aware of this, I should also accept00:09:52.588
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- it's going to fade away as a process of continuation.00:09:55.448
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- That's true. But on the other hand, when I focus00:10:00.572
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- on the work fineness and gather all my energy00:10:06.723
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- to achieve a perfect result,00:10:14.640
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- then I'm not sure what role the fading plays.00:10:33.727
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- If it gradually disappears...00:10:39.802
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- I don't think it would change colour, but it fades away...00:10:42.967
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- Well I haven't thought it over yet.00:10:48.509
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- I made this oil and I think you can see it's not it...00:10:51.066
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- So it's possible I will abandon the oil and stay with offset...00:11:00.980
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- We speak about CMYK but so far I got just to the magenta,00:11:13.221
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- because the cyan is so ugly that I'm not able00:11:19.088
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- to take it even into my hands.00:11:25.385
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- But the other paints put up resistance and that's it...00:11:31.222