Petr Dub

Painting. Picture. Object. Relief. Installation. Material. Space. Relations. Shape. Non/ boarders. Solid or soft. Vertical, horizontal, centricity. Colour, non-colour. Shadow. Stroke but not a gesture? Shades. Shiver? Segmenting. Surface, depth. Island. Shine as a surface? Drawing, dragging. As if something was about to follow, to ascend a prepared pedestal. Weight. Variants. Rarity. Nascence. A pregnant picture. Alien. Tumors. There isn’t a proper point of view, more possibilities. Front and underside. Attraction. Stain. Light. Hand tremble. Folding, geology, but. Circle. Place. Swing. Bones. Thinning and growing. Delight.

Two paintings by Petr Dub I want to mention are both blue. In my opinion, one of them represents an island or a place – something like a privileged space in which a subject and a body live. The second one consists of two parts: a stroke, a way, movement and its frame which differs from the way due to its material character. The material lies there whereas the way just moves like a vector which can be only filled up by a specific body. To the contrary, the island has its own geology and geography, even its hidden and reverse places, back sides and folds. These two painting principles differ radically, they both examine possibilities. Painting as an island providing a place of repose for the viewers, supporting them by its embossed and physical stages. Painting as a way exceeds its limits, it calls to remoteness. In the words of Alois Riegel it would represent an antonym of a haptic and optical principle in the history of painting. However antonym is a traditional ontological construct of the west. A linguistic construct. But this is not about the language. It is about the painting. A painting is not created with help of differences (which does not make the contrasts insignificant), but with help of plasticization and penetration. A traditional principle of drawing (academic) does not represent the principle of painting at all. The painting does not set the limits but the ground and movement. It can’t be abstract in the philosophic meaning. It is something more: a mistress (with all her vagaries, temptation and rejections)

Václav Hájek