0:07:02
The oldest sculptural works exhibited at The Worst of Martin Zet at Divus Pragerkabarett were made at a time when Ivan didn’t know me yet. When nobody knew me yet.
When I didn’t want to exhibit,* had moved away from Prague and was working intensively. I invested all the money that I could get into new things.** I placed my full trust in sculpture, I thought in terms of shapes interwoven with material, I condensed thoughts into words only when absolutely necessary, when they could help a feeling find the precise form. I abandoned and forget worn-down words in the belief that the completed sculpture would not require any guidelines. That it would be capable of acting nonverbally.*** I myself remember nothing from that time, only a kind of intense pressure, a general self-contained feeling of all-encompassing concentration, trust and yearning. A faith in working in isolation, zero social ambitions.
And so when Ivan asked me if I had any text related to the time when he didn’t know me yet, I realized that I didn’t – neither mine nor by anyone else – and so I put together a kind of diagrammatic overview of the evolution of my relationship to the media (material, categories, areas of interest) that dominated by working life during this period:
8 Aug. 2013, Prague-Libušín
Martin Zet – personal media biography:
born 1959
16 years without preference
8 years – metal
8 years – stone
6 years – action art
15 years – social topics
* My first real solo exhibition after school was not until 1991, six years after the Academy, at the Municipal Museum in Hořice.
** For instance, my investment into a three-meter monument constructed of Kralice marble was greater than the annual income from my full-time job at the time.
*** For this reason, the sculptures at the exhibitions are labeled only with letters and the year.
