Pomoderna and seven monochromes
Despite of living in the world of digital omnipresence, the printing press is still a revolutionary invention for conveying visual information. The industrial manufacture of pictures gradually changed our perception to such degree that we almost lost our direct experience with the non-repeatability of the original real models. The introduction of mechanical reproduction techniques enabled more intensive overwriting of history. The human memory thus became to a certain extent a hostage of the printing industry. The digitalisation has liberated our memory from this captivity, or at least it seems so. However, this liberation only happened at the expense of tangibility. The photography has left its material foundations and, in the form of a never-ending data stream, merged with the surrounding reality.
Attempts to read original images often go along with misunderstandings and doubts. The old grammar is slowly dying away and the new one has not been regularised yet. Prints from the previous century are becoming just as rare as the original real models. Traces of a disappearing technology. In the works of Svätopluk Mikyta, the aspects of elusiveness and repeatability are deliberately escalated up to the sheer boundary of visibility. The indistinct impressions of book illustrations are radiating the long lost aura of uniqueness. Colourful patches covering the lower levels containing particular motifs are inserted into split pictures. Some spots however remain vacant; the missing prints have not been replaced by anything. In the confusing deluge of technically perfect high-definition pictures, the pictorial non-distinctness may serve as a peculiar response to the tyranny of sharpness.
If, in the past, Mikyta’s creative work focused mainly on iconography related to period-style propaganda, then, in the present times, we may observe certain turn of his interest and inclination to aesthetics of applied arts. The single-coloured ground motifs of posters and parts of interior design create an uncertain environment. What remains is a playful game with the contradictory legacy of the printing industry and the unreliability of our own memory.
Jiří Havlíček
- I am not sure the mic will work if I put it here...00:00:05.166
- 00:00:05.166
- I could pin it to my beard.00:00:09.349
- 00:00:09.349
- The show is entitled 'Pomoderna and Seven Monochromes'.00:00:21.088
- 00:00:21.088
- It can be taken seriously, but also ironically, of course.00:00:25.184
- 00:00:25.184
- In a certain way it refers to the artworks shown here.00:00:32.318
- 00:00:32.318
- The word 'pomoderna' doesn't exist, of course.00:00:38.183
- 00:00:38.183
- Though it's a non-word, it refers to modernity and modernism,00:00:42.376
- 00:00:42.376
- and to the things that are visually represented here,00:00:46.565
- 00:00:46.565
- things that I work with. They refer to past,00:00:50.832
- 00:00:50.832
- which I have been working with continually for some time now.00:00:55.109
- 00:00:55.109
- And in this show I would like to take this continuity up again,00:00:59.310
- 00:00:59.310
- but more importantly I am also trying to develop it and go beyond00:01:03.577
- 00:01:03.577
- in comparison to the previous shows and created artworks.00:01:07.633
- 00:01:07.633
- All the things that are shown here were made for this exhibition.00:01:11.782
- 00:01:11.782
- It doesn't mean I have made them only recently;00:01:16.041
- 00:01:16.041
- they have been part of my collection for some time now.00:01:20.232
- 00:01:20.232
- But only now they have started, in a way, to 'fit in', to this show.00:01:24.439
- 00:01:24.439
- I tried to created a certain unifying pattern that would operate here00:01:28.803
- 00:01:28.803
- and hint at some new direction00:01:32.942
- 00:01:32.942
- and some new thinking00:01:37.234
- 00:01:37.234
- but within the same kind of material I have been working with in past.00:01:41.520
- 00:01:41.520
- It might be worthwhile to mention00:01:48.880
- 00:01:48.880
- that objects Pomoderna I and Pomoderna II00:01:52.984
- 00:01:52.984
- - two showcases that are quite stepping out in space.00:01:57.447
- 00:01:57.447
- The boxes come originally from Hotel Kyjev00:02:03.709
- 00:02:03.709
- and they are filled in a collage-like or bulletin-board-like manner00:02:07.777
- 00:02:07.777
- with my redrawing that are already quite renown.00:02:11.881
- 00:02:11.881
- But this places them as if on a whole new level,00:02:16.045
- 00:02:16.045
- where I, myself, have tried to disrupt00:02:20.167
- 00:02:20.167
- the principle of their original referentiality,00:02:24.481
- 00:02:24.481
- their seriousness.00:02:28.618
- 00:02:28.618
- Because it seems to be striking a serious pose,00:02:32.334
- 00:02:32.334
- but when you gaze it, you start to notice there are disproportional interventions,00:02:36.481
- 00:02:36.481
- like, for example, expressive, weird hats00:02:40.496
- 00:02:40.496
- placed on heads of some figures of authority, power or culture, etc.00:02:44.653
- 00:02:44.653
- But I am talking about this artwork,00:02:51.390
- 00:02:51.390
- because it's an elaboration of my previous work and thinking,00:02:55.526
- 00:02:55.526
- and since this is my first, and this big, solo show in Prague,00:02:59.781
- 00:02:59.781
- I wanted to show this00:03:04.301
- 00:03:04.301
- and express the continuity,00:03:08.530
- 00:03:08.530
- or, say, the origins of the later works.00:03:12.953
- 00:03:12.953
- I was talking about inconspicuous ties a minute ago,00:03:18.499
- 00:03:18.499
- whereby we are getting to the monochromes00:03:22.959
- 00:03:22.959
- - it's a very clean matter - serigraphy on paper00:03:28.470
- 00:03:28.470
- - that fits into contemporary visuality,00:03:35.495
- 00:03:35.495
- referentiality and reappropriation00:03:39.682
- 00:03:39.682
- of modernity.00:03:44.389
- 00:03:44.389
- They look also very clean, as if newly made,00:03:48.665
- 00:03:48.665
- but the truth is they are appropriated prints, found objects -00:03:52.800
- 00:03:52.800
- they are under prints of socialist posters from Cvernovka.00:03:57.098
- 00:03:57.098
- And that's quite an important moment of the artwork00:04:01.172
- 00:04:01.172
- that can't be seen immediately, but it refers, of course, to my work00:04:05.509
- 00:04:05.509
- with ideas of totalitarian regimes,00:04:09.839
- 00:04:09.839
- past and power structures that used to operate here.00:04:14.120
- 00:04:14.120
- Therefore in the beauty of the monochrome, of the pristine color field,00:04:18.458
- 00:04:18.458
- there hides the reason they were printed for -00:04:22.695
- 00:04:22.695
- that they are actually just the under prints00:04:27.030
- 00:04:27.030
- used for the production00:04:31.361
- 00:04:31.361
- of messages loaded with propaganda.00:04:35.874
- 00:04:35.874
- This is one of the newest things00:04:49.203
- 00:04:49.203
- that was created by the very end of the creating of the exhibition concept00:04:53.504
- 00:04:53.504
- and it wouldn't be created weren't the show curated by Jirka Havlíček,00:04:57.864
- 00:04:57.864
- because when meeting in order to work out the conception of show00:05:02.087
- 00:05:02.087
- he planted an idea into my head00:05:06.455
- 00:05:06.455
- - an idea of 'polygraphic industry' was mentioned,00:05:10.678
- 00:05:10.678
- because I collect books and work with original materials.00:05:14.952
- 00:05:14.952
- A collection of notebooks from 1930s or 1940s00:05:25.689
- 00:05:25.689
- I had bought long time ago in Prague, when I had lived here,00:05:30.106
- 00:05:30.106
- and now they are back.00:05:34.416
- 00:05:34.416
- They were put aside; forgotten even;00:05:38.366
- 00:05:38.366
- I couldn't fit them into the context00:05:42.678
- 00:05:42.678
- of the things I was doing back then. They wouldn't hold together.00:05:46.980
- 00:05:46.980
- And now, suddenly, with the monochromatic under prints00:05:51.228
- 00:05:51.228
- I have found a link,00:05:55.456
- 00:05:55.456
- so I decided to look at them and try and make something of it.00:05:58.909
- 00:05:58.909
- The reason it attracted me00:06:03.167
- 00:06:03.167
- was the fact of it being 3D.00:06:07.163
- 00:06:07.163
- This exhibition is different from my other shows00:06:10.924
- 00:06:10.924
- by the fact it is probably the most sculptural one;00:06:15.222
- 00:06:15.222
- coming from the paper, I really enter the space here.00:06:19.463
- 00:06:19.463
- The title 'Pomoderna and Seven Monochromes'00:06:26.633
- 00:06:26.633
- actually conceals sort of a deliberate strategy00:06:30.565
- 00:06:30.565
- of the imperfective quality of our environment00:06:34.850
- 00:06:34.850
- - we strive to be in the picture, of course,00:06:39.061
- 00:06:39.061
- to reflect the very edge of what's going on right now in world00:06:43.192
- 00:06:43.192
- and by the distorted title I come here with00:06:47.295
- 00:06:47.295
- and present myself00:06:51.533
- 00:06:51.533
- I refer as if to the fact we failed and keep failing in those efforts,00:06:55.783
- 00:06:55.783
- that it reached us in our environment already in some mythologized form,00:06:59.925
- 00:06:59.925
- carried over as if underhandedly, through a friend of a friend,00:07:07.096
- 00:07:07.096
- and I have as if worked with this assumption00:07:11.289
- 00:07:11.289
- and now bring it here to a professional environment,00:07:15.625
- 00:07:15.625
- or back, to the place it had come from, or to the place we believe it had came from,00:07:19.869
- 00:07:19.869
- and it's a kind of a hyperbole, a work with the essence of the concepts.00:07:23.971