Humbly answers Your command form, the one that, it seems, can’t be defeated in delusion and must be compeled to profess the dizziness and glory of the mystical truth! wrote Otokar Březina to František Bílek in 1901. Similarly as the above mentioned poet and sculptor, Ladislav Babuščák and Jan Šimánek also regularly meet although with ranging intensity and because of different reasons. Both freshmen at Department of photography at FAMU they met sometime at the beginning on September 2005. After three years they are introducing themselves at the exhibition which is a specific registration of their sometimes complicated relationship (without the meaning that Czech language most commonly adjudges to this word). Although Babuščák’s and Šimánek’s works are in many ways different and stem from different roots, common characteristics can be found-they both vibrate between graphics, installation, painting or video, the photography by which they’re most commonly recognized is often their input impulse, by which the working process only starts and sometimes is not present at all; both often use rigorous manual work. And both are fascinated by the interpretation possibilities of photography.
The purpose of this exhibition is not to log up their ‚artistic dialogue’. Almost the other way around. At first glance both of their starting points are different (in one case it is classic art, modern classical music, pop culture, expressional dance, in the other one it’s the nature and philosophy resulting from it); different are the shown pieces with the exception of the portraits creating the obvious link, Babuščák’s dedicated to Šimánek and vice-versa. Vulnerable hero versus the Fantast outside time and space. Interconnected are other pieces: Šimánek’s Jabloň (Apple Tree) (detail), unique apple tree (part of nature) becoming an universal code. Babuščák is also showing photographs where landscape is the starting point: Oceán Moře (Ocean Sea) -- whether it is a result of Šimánek’s influence, author’s pursuit to capture the infinite or divine principles, or from a formal stand point explore possibilities of monochrome in photography is probably not relevant. Another Babuščák’s work, set of portraits fragments formed from granulated pictures on a rough surface creates a counterpart to the refined aestetics of the other exhibited works. Šimánek used the same technique in his portrait of LB.
In this text number of other important subjects were meant to be mentioned: internet, pain, James Dean, stars, sex, abstraction, visuality, Tracey Emin, emotions, cultic, sign, gesture, polarity, speech, description, sperm, concept, dolphins. ... But an onlooker perhaps can fill them in the right places.
A lot has been said and written about art (in a lot of important texts), that it can mediate the innermost affections and feelings. This exhibition is a instrument to communicate the incommunicable. That ouch and yeah.
Helena Musilová
