Skip navigation

 

  • EXHIBITIONS /
  • ARTISTS /
  • NEWS /
  • GALLERY /
  • DEPOSITORY INSIGHT /
  • CONTACT

Jaromir Novotny / Visible paintings

Jaromir Novotny Visible paintings

01 / 02 / 03 / 04 / 05

OPENING RECEPTION

Friday, October 29, 2010
6 – 9 p.m.

EXHIBITIONS DATES

October 30, 2010 - January 22, 2011

ABOUT THE SHOW

Jaromir Novotny / Visible Paintings

A painting knows what it wants to be.(1)
A painting is something artificial, yet even so it is naturally self-evident to the highest possible degree. As if it originated by itself, without any effort on my part. This peculiar detachment provokes my curiosity and engagement. Even given the enticing notion that “aural depictions of the past often consist of objects produced in such a way that they are not in fact ‘the work of human hands’”(2), I maintain an awareness of the painting as a thing, an object that is “manufactured”. Working within certain rigidly defined guidelines and the consideration and acceptance of random processes together form a single whole. At the same time I consider verticality (of format, composition) and a scale of 1:1 (human figure: painting) to be constant parameters of a certain “basic (default) setting” with respect to the perceiving viewer. On this background, the paintings “reveal” their essential properties, whose values reach slightly above zero, i.e. cross over the boundary of visibility. These include a limited range of colours which seem to arise from white only, as well as the depiction of the surface of the painting, which appears to be only just detaching itself from the surface of the canvas, as if it were some kind of initial “motif” of painting itself, appearing almost to blend both with the surface and the format of the painting-object. The process outlined is not necessarily unidirectional – it may concern extinction as well as creation. Withdrawal / advancement. In any case, however, at stake is movement within a narrowly delimited “phase” of minimal visible transformations (of colour scheme, composition) which also give rise to an important “functional” aspect of these paintings consisting of making the medium of painting visible. A minimal mutual differentiation seems to be a general and basic process here, on the backdrop of which it is possible to materialise - or at the very least point to - certain variables of time and space and in particular their resultant phenomenon - a place. Standing in front of a painting, I sense the existence of here and now with the awareness, however, that “Now is the inner image of the Past.” (3)


J.N.


1 variation on statements by Louis Kahn: „What a thing wants to be.“ „A space which knows what it wants to be is a room.“ etc.
2 Georges Didi-Huberman, Devant le Temps / Before Time
3 „das Jetzt das Innerste Bild des Gewesenen“, Walter Benjamin, Das Passagen-Werk / Arcades Project

More about Jaromir Novotny


  •   PRAGUE
  •   BERLIN

PAST SHOWS

  • JSG / Another step forward - our gallery moved to Prague
  • Georg Ettl / Early works from 1960s and 70s
  • Jitka Hanzlova / HORSE
  • Karima Al-Mukhtarova / I don´t agree with myself
  • Jan van der Pol / A NEW DAY
  • Jan Durina / STUDIES
  • Jiri Cernicky, Andrej Dubravsky, Jarg Geismar, Kristof Kintera, Maki Na Kamura, Katarina Poliacikova, Pavel Prikasky, Sofie Svejdova / L´ACCROCHAGE
  • Katarína Poliačiková / Maybe the last one I see
  • Hans Rath / Chêne Blanc
  • Sofie Svejdova / Big Hug Mug / TV series paintings
  • David Böhm / Jiri Franta / Making of
  • Jårg Geismar / feeling my own blood
  • Mark Ther / Das wandernde Sternlein
  • Kristof Kintera, Andrej Dubravsky, David Böhm|Jiri Franta, Maki Na Kamura, Stefan a Wengen, Nadine Fecht, Roey Heifetz, Dora Eszter Molnar / Accrochage 13/14
  • Based on Paper / David Böhm | Jiri Franta, Nadine Fecht, Roey Heifetz, Dora Eszter Molnar, Christian Pilz
  • Yunchul Kim / Eluvial Horizon
  • Kristof Kintera / Bad News
  • Katarina Poliacikova / Sonntag
  • Jan Kotik / Die Fläche versucht nach Luft zu schnappen
  • Andrej Dubravsky / Golden Sands
  • Jiri Franta | David Böhm / ECHOLOG
  • Adela Babanova / Ich hab hier eine Leiche
  • Petra Feriancova / A Report on the Time Spending
  • Leonid Tishkov / Derelict Utopies: Dabloids and Ladomir
  • Michal Pechoucek with guest Martin Kohout / Virgins´ Lives
  • Group exhibition / On the Threshold
  • Stefan à Wengen / Comfortably Numb
  • Josef Bolf / Don't Look Now
  • Jaromir Novotny / Visible paintings
  • Hans Rath / Flughafen Tempelhof und andere Bilder
  • Marketa Othova
  • Kristof Kintera / A Bigger Problem Than Yours
  • Veronika Holcova / Onerous Past, Uncertain Future
  • Miroslav Tichý
  • Ioana Nemes / Relics for the Afterfuture (Brown)


  • Exhibitions|
  • Artists|
  • News|
  • Gallery|
  • Contact

Copyright © 2021 Jiri Svestka Gallery. All right reserved.