Artists show best of Czech graphic art
Carla Bianpoen, Contributor, The Jakarta Post
An important and beautiful exhibition of Czech graphic art opened recently at Cemara-6 Gallery in Jakarta, its second stop after Kuala Lumpur. Thirty-two works of the best graphic artists from the Czech Republic remind the viewer of such great Masters like Albrecht Durer and Rembrandt van Rijn, but their content and the firm lines that shape the sensitive images testify to the contemporary nature of their art.
With great depth of thought and skill, the works of Jiri Anderle (born in 1936), Oldrich Kulhanek (born in 1940) and Karel Demel (born in 1942) are fascinating expressions of the human condition.
As renowned artist Dolorosa Sinaga puts it, with different ideas and concepts, each of these artists has been able to convey thoughts, visions and opinions with a high sense of the aesthetic. "They are the best I have ever seen", she adds.
Jiri Anderle has often expressed his deep concern of the dangers that threaten the human condition. Touched by his times, one of the cycles of paintings, graphic drawings presented under the title Commedia dell'Arte (1985), depicts scenes of atrocities merged with fantastic drawings of human figures and heads.
Horrified at human greed and lust for power, Anderle, who worked for seven years with the avant-garde Prague Black Theater of Jiri Smec, sometimes takes refuge with classical music, which he finds soothing to the mind.
In this exhibition, Anderle presents portraits of classic composers like Beethoven, Chopin, Hayden, Vivaldi, Mahler, Wagner and Janacek, recognizable to connoisseurs and lovers of classical music by small additional images identifying a well-known composition. The striking features that come out remind us that Anderle was a skilled draftsman before he studied painting and graphic art at the 90-year-old Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.
According to Oldrich Kulhanek, an artist should give an account of himself, and of the time and place he inhabits. "The artist should reveal the pretense (or lies) of the establishment, unmasking what is happening to man and showing how man is manipulated and dehumanized. The artist should present an account of the soul of his contemporary."
His works show how he stands his ground. Portrait of My Secret Policeman, for instance, is a 76cm by 60cm lithograph, showing a face full of plasters, in which a half open mouth is cut in two set on a background of red text covered with stamps. Touching and with refined sensitivity, the artist describes life's course from youth to old age in Ecce Homo No. 5, which contrasts with the bold and strong intertwined arms that support struggling hands in More and More 1.
In 1971, the Czech secret police (the StB) arrested him on the grounds that he was defaming representatives of communist countries in his series of 1968 to 1971 graphic sheets, and subsequent sedition in the 70s put a total ban on his exhibitions. He was also denied cooperation with publishing houses and public art galleries. Nevertheless, his art found its way to the free world.
While Karel Demel is as engaged with the human condition as his two other colleagues, his images take a more lyrical, albeit mystic tone.
"To create, means to me mainly asking questions," he states, adding, "I avoid making any great proclamations and manifestos. I have too much of a respect toward material. The first cut into pure, glossy copper I perceive as something dramatic. Then the plate yields itself ever more to the point when it is difficult for me to say when it is time to stop."
Admitting that he often prefers dreaming to reality, Demel says he tries to express the invisible energy that we are filled with and which rises up to the light.
The Flute I, a mixed media image, may express exactly that: A figure likened to a skeleton, his upper body wrapped in a whirl of lines that come together in a central light in the middle of his chest, blows a flute while standing amid what looks like a desolate world in the wake of a devastating disaster.
With just a thin line between the esoteric and the spiritual, the imaginative and the surreal, Karel Demel's fascinating lyrical images like Tantra III, Tchakra, The Harbor and many more, weave together realities, myths and ancient beliefs, which ceaselessly engage the perceptive mind. Of quite another style, but as intriguing as always, is The Aquarium, a mixed media piece showing a figure sitting on a chair who is framed in the water of an aquarium up to his neck, with a fish coming his way, and a clod of earth behind his head.
Demel, who like his two colleagues, is a graduate of the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, is also a graduate of the state conservatory in Prague.
This excellent exhibition will also travel to Hanoi, Bangkok, Singapore and Johor Bahru.
The Theatrum Mundi exhibition of Czech Graphic Art is on until March 31 at Cemara-6 Galeri, Jl. HOS Cokroaminoto 9-11, Menteng, Jakarta. Tel: 324505