Czech artist Jiri Chmelar wants to grasp infinity

Czech artist Jiri Chmelar wants to grasp infinity

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): Czech-born artist Jiri Chmelar has finally made
it to Jakarta. He has come to Bali three times in the past, but
does not consider those trips as a visit to this country.

"That place is not Indonesia. It is not part of this world.
Bali is a piece of paradise that is out of this world," the
artist told The Jakarta Post minutes after he arrived here all
the way from the south of France.

With him, Chmelar brings an exhibition of more than 30 pieces
of his latest work where he uses the medium of photography to
create images that are so stunningly surreal that they hurt. But
they also provide much pleasure, which is, as we all know just
another name for pain.

Although Chmelar insists he is not alone in doing this kind of
work, his work has a certain originality about it that is not
often seen at least not in this part of the world. The use of
primary colors on glossy photographic paper mixed with closeup
shots of faces from around the world superimposed with other
multiple images, serve as a great big splash of cold water rude
enough to wake up any sleepy imagination.

When Chmelar says it is the process of deconstruction that
excites him most, all he means is that he refuses to take
anything in life at face value. Desperately clinging to the way
his mind worked as a child when he would spend hours putting
together something and then dismantling it all, Chmelar continues
to collect what you and I would call garbage and recycle it into
a piece of art.

The central European artist was introduced to Southeast Asia
in 1997 when Chmelar exhibited for the first time in Bangkok,
Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Hanoi using the title Playing the
Game as opposed to Playing Games.

Actually his affair with East Asia started in 1977 when he was
posted at the Czechoslovakian embassy in Hanoi as cultural and
press attache for two years. On returning home, he could not get
himself to work for a totalitarian government anymore and he
escaped, leaving his wife of three years and his place of birth
to start life all over again. His most treasured possession at
that time, he recalls, was his dreams.

He went to Germany without knowing a word of German and was
forced to use his art to communicate but found it very difficult
to make a living as an artist.

Between making the rounds of art galleries where most rejected
his work, Chmelar did odd jobs to earn money. A gallery in France
finally acknowledged Chmelar's talent and the rest, as they say,
is history.

Today the artist has lost count of the number of exhibitions
he has participated in since those difficult days.

Chmelar started his career in art by assembling boxes made of
wood, with a glass front and filled with colorful objects, shapes
and forms. He traces the inspiration to his childhood when his
father found time to be with the family and brought out the
portable puppet theater. As he opened the box full of a thousand
and one items to entertain, the children waited without either
blinking or breathing. It is in imitation of his father's magic
box that had made him so happy as a child that Chmelar has been
assembling and reassembling boxes for the past two decades.

The box fascinates Chmelar because it imprisons and protects.
It represents the world Chmelar was born into, a world devoid of
civil liberties but also provided him with inspiration preserved
from the past on how to resist oppression.

His greatest fear in this very fast pace of life is the loss
of primary pleasures from the psyche. His circumstances forced
him to sever the most precious of human relations with his young
wife, and his country when he decided to go into self exile in
1980 and realized the pain of having done so only much later.
Although he has no regrets about the decision he made two decades
ago, he does feel that nothing in this world is more important
than the relationship between one human and another.

"It does not matter where you live these days in a world that
has become so small but what is far more important is all those
you love," says Chmelar, regretting that in our hurry we leave
little time to cultivate relationships with human beings. So
these days he spends much of his time doing just that.

From objects Chmelar is graduating to the human form whose
various moods he tries to understand. And no other face
fascinates him more at the moment than that of a Balinese. His
visits to the island are preserved in several roles of film.

"They are still in a drawer and I wait for the right moment to
expose them," smiles the very soft-spoken Chmelar who describes a
typical Balinese face as one so full of joy that it makes him
never want to stop looking at it. He claims that throughout his
stay in Bali he did not see one sad face. Although he imagines
that many of them must have similar problems and anxieties as
others in the world.

In the Jakarta exhibition, visitors will notice there are less
boxes and more faces on display. But Chmelar does not like to be
labeled a photographer. He calls himself an artist who uses
photographic techniques like multi exposure and "sandwiches" to
make sense of what lies beyond. After all it is infinity itself
that the untiring artist wants to grasp more than anything else
in the world.

The exhibition opens on Feb. 8. and runs until Feb. 17 at the
Czech Embassy Cultural Room in Jl. Gereja Theresia 20, Central
Jakarta. The viewing hours are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.