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Gabriela Kotiková:Vojta, at present you are studying under Václav Stratil in the Intermedia Studio at the Brno Faculty of Fine Arts. What is Václav Stratil like as the head of the studio? His attitude to life and his art performances are sometimes quite provocative. Has he got a specific method of teaching or is it similar as in other studios?
Vojtěch Maša:Václav spends a lot of time in the studio, he works there, so we get a lot of practice. I remember that during my first year at school I used to spend the whole day with him. We painted, drew, talked, played, read… I think he has a very specific approach to teaching, he performs, there is no difference between his professional and private life.
GK:How would you characterize the undergraduate teaching assistant Filip Cenek? What kind of impact does his personality have on the work of students in the studio?
VM:I prefer to discuss my work with Filip alone, in privacy, I don´t know what the other students prefer. He is more introvert, for me it’s a different position, a different approach, but Václav can sometimes also be quite self-contained. Thanks to both of them we enjoy great freedom in the studio. I have never experienced such a feeling of freedom in my life. On the other hand someone might misuse such freedom, someone might feel lost… but I personally like it.
GK:You devote yourself mainly to painting and drawing but sometimes you transgress to performance art or activities that count on reactions of other people. This was for instance the case of “The Great Application” (2010), a large-scale painting (400 x 270 cm) on one of the walls in the assembly hall of the Faculty of Arts, where you asked the dean for the permission to continue working on the painting in the course of the five years of studies. The painting was meant to be changed at the end of each year and every curator was expected to deal with the presence of the painting in the exhibition hall. Could you tell us a bit more about this work and what do you think of the reaction of the dean Michal Gabriel to your request?
VM:The largest space at the Faculty of Fine Arts is the assembly hall which is also used as an exhibition hall but there is no curator, the hall is closed all the time (the key is at the reception) and there are no visitors. We wanted to change this, we wanted to transform the assembly hall into an open space where people (not only students) could meet and work. The Dean Garbriel didn´t like the fact that I didn´t apply for this in a traditional way but I invaded the space with my application directly. If I had applied in a standard way, I´d say he would have been willing to discuss the matter with me. But I wanted to draw attention to their mistake and to occupy the space and be a part of every exhibition to come.
GK:What a shame that the space of the assembly hall is a bit “dead” during the day. If you had got the green light, it might have evoked interesting reactions of different curators. Most probably some of them would have been irritated and they would have tried to alter the space so as to cut off your painting and so on… In 2010 you went to Japan, to Asagaya College of Fine Arts and Design in Tokyo. When you arrived did you find anything surprising?
VM:There was an exchange programme with the Asagaya College and every year one student from our school went there. Teachers there have greater authority than teachers in Europe. When the teacher criticized some of the end-of-year-work, some of my girl schoolmates started crying, but here in Europe they wouldn´t get so upset or they would dispute. The school laid more emphasis on practice, manga studios are very popular, “character design”, film, animation…I think there were two studios of fine art – painting and “image creation”. I chose the second one. It was a private school.
GK:How would you describe the approach to painting in the studio where you studied? VM: In the studio of painting the students did very subtle, sensitive works and they had really mastered the technique well. I really liked some of the drawings the students in our studio did. I remember one schoolmate who was painting a beautiful strange picture using a special colouring method, as if she had a colouring book. I only understood about 20% of everything that was happening around me, so I had to use my imagination and intuition as other communication channels, I had to do a lot of guessing, I even tried hypnosis. Ignorance, confusion and accidents – this is what shaped my work.
GK:Many of your paintings and drawings from that period are influenced by Japan, I find for instance your paintings of Japanese fishes interesting. I also liked your activity in one of the underground stations in Tokyo where you placed behind the tourniquets arrows inscribed “I´M HAPPY” and “I´M NOT HAPPY”. The only way to get into the underground was to quickly decide which arrow you wanted to follow. Did the passengers hesitate a lot and did it slow down the flow of passengers?
VM:Most people didn´t pay attention and chose the easiest passage. There was the same number of gates for the happy ones as for the unhappy ones, only one gate was wider – it was meant for handicapped passengers and the majority of people chose this one. That´s where I place the arrow saying “I´m not happy” and this way I think I manipulated the results of the survey, so it corresponded with my expectations. Some people hesitated and intentionally chose the “happy gate”, others chose the “unhappy” one, and others tried not to step on the arrows on the ground.
GK:The result of your survey was that people were mostly unhappy and you decided to inform the emperor… Do you think he got your letter? Did he reply?
VM:I really don´t know if he got my letter, but I haven´t received a reply yet.
GK:Two years ago you won the Prize Exit awarded to outstanding young artists. The money you received you used for founding your own Nobel Prize because you said that since leaving secondary school your ambition was to be awarded the Nobel Prize. Did you really make the prize from 18 carat gold? You said you would be satisfied even with a tiny medal and you would use a magnifying glass to get it the size of the genuine Nobel prize, no matter where you would display it, whether in a gallery or on your bedside table. So what was the outcome?
VM:In the end I had the medal made of genuine gold the way it used to be made until 1980. With view to the budget I could afford to have it made almost 4 cm in diameter and I displayed it on a glass base in the gallery Kostka. You need two magnifying glasses to see the right size of the medal, I exhibited the medal with instructions of what to do to see the real size.
GK:In the beginning you studied mathematical biology at Masaryk University, didn’ t you? Did you finish your studies? And why did you decide to start studying art? Did you want to join these two fields and is it even possible…?
VM:Yes, I did finish my studies. This question is related to the exhibition “Steve Hawking” in the gallery. Ivan Diviš expresses himself in relation to science and art through poetry and I comment on his poem through an application in Java which I regard as an illustration. I would leave the visitors to answer the question what is more – art or science and whether they can be somehow interconnected.
GK:I would just like to ask one more question. How does this Java application work? The visitor can choose a plant whose appearance is generated and creates a “work of art”?
VM:There are more plants there and one animal. They are generated with the help of recursive grammars, which the visitor can picture. They are so-called L-systems and their use for modelling plants is well-known. It´s not new, so I wouldn´t say that the visitor creates a work of art. I have programmed a function which enables you to add your own grammar and model your own original trees or natural forms.
GK:Your second exhibition in the Gallery Jelení called “Faraway, so close” is a series of drawings. Is this exhibition somehow connected with the film by Wim Wenders from the year 1993?
VM:Yes, it’s a kind of a soundtrack for this film.
