Martin Zet
in his performances he allows time to act in its two basic dimensions and meanings: time as a process, movement and transformation and in a second case as a status, image and representation. Although Zet completed classic studies of sculpture at the Academy of Creative Arts (AVU) in Prague, he did not remain satisfied with works as a static unit, as an immobile snapshot. On the contrary, he favoured the understanding of artefacts, which he viewed as open, fluid fragments. Martin Zet’s creations often take the shape of metaphors. He enlists the help of copies of certain, visible features to reference their meaning. Most of all he uses the possibilities of mutual interchanging of near and far, known and unknown, spoken and unspoken or concrete and abstract. Zet’s project, Sea Drawings / Kresby mořem resulted in a series of sketches which have the form of a natural image (physei eikones) or an image not created by a human hand (Acheiropoieta). These drawings developed in the natural time and rhythm of the sea. Several ornamental lines and surfaces are represented here by the cosmic „breath“ in which reality’s transcendental existence plays out. Zet’s performance, Czech Collection of the 20th Century/Česká sbírka 20. století, had a seemingly political subtext (it took place during the Czech presidential elections in 1998). A group of people dressed up as the Czech lion and held a demonstration carrying picket signs with images of Czech rulers and presidents from the last century. From these portraits a universal version of the Czech head of state emerged: a computer montage combining the features of all represented rulers and presidents. However, even this event reflected mainly on the endurance and continuity of certain stereotypes and the work of memory (whose constant foe is forgetting). Here remembrance was represented by the metaphor of montage and defocusing, in which it loses exact features and information is replaced by fantasy or hallucination.
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