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Different strokes

An old medium gets fresh treatment in a brash group show
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By Tony Ozuna
For The Prague Post
October 17th, 2007 issue

 

Still — Another Exhibition of Painting

at Futura Ends Nov. 25 Holečkova 49, Prague 5–Smíchov. Open Wed.–Sun. noon–7 p.m.

COURTESY PHOTO
Not a show for the faint of heart: Josef Bolf puts nightmares on canvas.
This group show of 15 artists (locals and foreign guests) has a mischievously misleading title, because, in addition to some paintings, the exhibition includes lots of videos and, more surprisingly, painted sculptures and site-specific painted interiors.
The first room of the exhibition sets the stage with Futura (2007) by Roland Geissel. The entire room, including the floor and ceiling, is painted asymmetrically with black-and-white squares. In the next room are photos by Geissel showing the same concept in other locations and in other color variations, to much better effect. The overall impression is a sensual rush as well as inspiration for avant-garde home decor.
Around the corner, Marek Kvetán’s Video Erotic (2004) is a video of alternating color stripes set to a soundtrack. If this one covered a wall instead of a TV screen, it would have far greater impact. Also in the room are two glowing light boxes projecting computer designs (created by Kvetán) of indecipherable, illuminated texts titled Txt Al Quaran Face and The Holy Quran.
Federico Pietrella’s two untitled works nearby, both from 2004, are the most personal and imaginative in the show — especially his large landscape done in thumb prints (acrylic on paper). The other is a large mass of wavy and spiraling lines in black that evoke a city street.
In the gallery’s video room, Jeff Wyckoff’s Alpha-Omega (2005) is a series of color projections with an industrial soundtrack. It’s a drone of sound and color, with the Alpha section mostly in black and white with bursts of bright color blinking furiously into black and white again, while Omega is like a scientist’s inner universe of mesmerizing color and black space.
Appropriately set in one of the corners in the gallery’s cellar, Anna Orlikowska’s wall projection Film About Worms II is just that — and this mass of pulsating worms all seems to be reproducing like mad to the soundtrack of a silly pop opera.
Ádám Szabó’s videos in the cellar passages are still-life portraits shot on video. Apples (2007) is an image of two apples on a white plate and green checkered tablecloth. The apples subtly change positions and forms on the video monitor, and resemble paintings by Magritte in their surreal simplicity — except that Magritte would have probably titled the work Cats or something else with a semiotic twist.
Another projection on a wall uses the same concept with a variety of fruits, a glass of red wine and an hourglass. In this one, titled Vanitas (2007), Szabó’s image more closely resembles a still life painting by the Old Masters.
The upstairs space is devoted to paintings, finally, though most of these are still on the unusual side. There are a number of works by Josef Bolf, including two full-color nightmarish atmospheres titled Room No. 2 and Out (2006) that mix his wax scratch-painting method with watercolors, ink and acrylics. There are also four smaller scratch paintings in the artist’s signature black-and-pink titled Bad District I–IV.
There are also two new works (or in Bolf’s case, sad stories) from 2007: Goatling includes a crying goat-boy being petted by a man on a bench, while a girl with a wolf-head hat sits nearby. Burning Car shows a car in flames, a girl carrying an animal’s head in her arms and a boy in the foreground wearing a skunk’s head as a hat, with his hand gushing blood.
Nathan Ritterpusch’s series Old Enough to Be My Mother (numbers 50, 51, 52, 53) turn magazine models from the 1950s into warped, practically melted-down portraits. His two works Earth Wizard and You Have Lost Your Way are larger canvases with more chaotic visions of nude vixens merged with cyberspace kitsch.
At the end, Oskar Dawicki’s Painting for Opening Bottles, I & II (2007) incorporates some Braník beer bottles (all empty but one) in beer cases on the ground with two technical-looking paintings of beer bottles on the wall.
The last cubicle of paintings is by Jakub Hošek; these show more gushing blood (as in Bolf’s works) along with decapitated teepees, an odd creature in a feather suit, winding intestines and other twisted imagery, though many of Hošek’s scrawled figures and objects could also be a radical form of typography.
The inclusion of Hošek and Bolf may be the only drawback to this exhibit. While their works are always unnerving and thus enlightening in a way, the artists have become such familiar faces in local exhibitions that their inclusion slightly upsets the element of freshness.
The name of the show, “Still — Another Exhibition of Painting” could be understood to mean that some things never change in the world of art: Painting still has and always will have its special place. This is a good thing, especially considering the developments seen in the more experimental works in this show.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at features@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (17/10/2007):

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