Manual

The exhibitions of Lukáš Machalický may be read as essays that provide a commentary without words or deal with different social phenomena without confronting us, the viewers, with a clearly stated thesis.They always attract attention thanks to their installation, formal and architectural purity and seemingly exclude all sort of uncontrolled spontaneousness or randomness. On the contrary, deviations, balancing, duality and systems that fail, play a key role in the currenty work of the artist (Raut, Galerie Die Aktualität des Schönen…, Liberec, 2013). Lukáš Machalický has recently also laid emphasis on two contradictory areas, their clash and its consequences, on efficient manual labour and intellectual work, such as curatorship (Profi a Hobby, Zóna v pohybu, DOX, Praha, 2014).
The title of the exhibiton that Lukáš Machalický created for the Gallery 35M2 is closely linked with the phenomenon of a manual and handcraft. A manual is a helpful but flawed medium that almost everyone has encountered. Handcraft does not necessarily represent the author´s exceptionality or superior artistic bravura but it is also a bearer of traditioal values, such as freedom, self-reliance and social interaction. The structure of Manual takes on the form of objects arranged in an absurd order – school rulers, a construction laser and professional magnetic air level. The objects form a temporary sculpture which is even more curved in mirrors – standard mirrors labelled with their retail prices. The measuring devices retain their active measuring and surveying functions, the mirrors retain merely their function of reflecting.
A laser beam passes through a hole i a wall between two rooms, the signal is reflected in a mirror and with a slight deviation goes back to its source. A series of rulers of differet lengths show an expansive dimension ignoring the plasterboard structure and crossed air levels indulge in some sort of installation acrobatics. The measuring devices highlight the gallery´s structure, they transform the quality of the space in a noteworthy way with minimum means. We may notice a certain pragmatic sense of humour here, an extreme simplification of the visual language and an indifference to the sculptural object, and any interchangeability of material and form is excluded. However, the primary subject of this installation remains the gallery´s specific architecture and its conventional and accepted hierarchal conception in which the horizon is priviledged and its location defines the possibilities of motion ort he viewer´s field of vision.

Michal Pěchouček