From daily life ...
There are all these boards around me. They are always in front of me, floating invitingly, as if carbonated ... so I draw on them. First, they pretend they are all but alive. But as soon as I lean on them they jinx, they try to fizz out, or even inflate and dissolve into nowhere sometimes. One could almost fear they are going after him,... or her ... or fear that some elks' antlers would peek out of those inflated bellies, ripping across my lines, ... I'd better spread hues briskly, creating shadows and spaces, but mainly corners and angled pits, ... Angling the space is the real art .. . angles create depth, and that's where you can hide .... And so it goes on and on ... I got used to it ... I call it "oner" , or just" finchie" ... It's quiet now! ...
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"The Work of Jakub Kalousek, "Benevolent Anarchy", and The Revenge of the Natural World" Everyone has a friend or relative whom they are extremely fond of but don't enjoy being seen in public with. By fond I mean not merely amiably inclined towards; rather I mean that one shares a strong bond with this other person, shares a deep love and a peculiar kind of perspective towards the world which insists, without possibility of argument, upon a kinship or sense of alliance between the two persons. Similarities of upbringing, personality or life experience might foster such a connection, but, in the main, I am speaking of the kind of untimely or accidental union which forges together two altogether dissimilar elements. Such a union, as between a beautiful extrovert and a disfigured introvert, might be judged from the outside as merely highly unlikely, while in many cases it can, as between ferrous and non-ferrous metal, be safely considered to be impossible - except for the evidence of one's one eyes and ears and heart, which proves it possible in spite of the objections of the objective world. Possible but not always easy. In the sanctity of the private spaces frequented by this suspicious alloy, this attraction flourishes. Not necessarily symmetrical in its bi-polarity, there exists yet a dynamic flow which nourishes and renews both persons according to the parameters of each one's specific and idiosyncratic needs. But outside of these protective sanctums, this bond is put to difficult tests. The shy, ugly friend might suffer so mightily in public social situations that, in contrast, one's other friends might come to seem haughty, spoiled, rude, imperious, oblivious and insincere. Well, they mayor may not be so to some degree, as well might we all; but the point of course is that one cannot have such things consistently pointed out. One's friends are one's friends; having made the necessary choices and compromises and rationalizations, one would like to simply get on with things, go see a French film, nasally ingest methedrine and go dancing, or watch television while eating ice cream. One doesn't want to be reminded, at least not too often, of the essential instability and artificiality of the world one has created around oneself. Or, in another case, the hefty liver-spotted uncle with whom one might pleasantly spend hours or even days sitting in a musty workshop, calmly whittling together and discussing, in an oblique, metaphorical, and psychologically fertile language of private disclosure, might turn into a drunken, obnoxious buffoon when anyone else is around. This relative's cynicism and sense of moral certainty might, when shared with one sympathetic companion in a dark field swarming with fireflies, be an endless source of comfort and direction for that companion. But bring the sun up, invite your girlfriend and her female friend, and a few cousins, and your teacher, and this same crusty, taciturn, sagacious uncle blossoms into a thick-headed, thin-skinned racist and lecher. The difficulty of such situations lies in their insistence on the existence of a highly-charged paradoxical state of complete contradiction. One is asked to believe two, strikingly different, moral arguments at the same time. And these are not external arguments but internal ones: oneself with two warring loves or faiths within. "Faith" is an appropriate word to use here, as these situations bear many similarities to the discovery that one's old friend the parish priest is a practicing pedophile, or to the attempt to understand religion's notion of liberation through obeisance (or oppression). And while "Faith" is an appropriate word, it is in these and other instances a quite inappropriate event or act. In most instances, in fact. The modern world is not a place for the contradictions created by acts of Faith!.
The modern, or I should say, post-modern, world is a place of negotiated compromises, civil submissions and bureaucratic "pseudo-faith," intended to propel us, with our certificates and plans and vague smiles, safely through streets crowded with the innumerable problematic presence of others who (dare I say it) are not like us. But, as we wriggle past the millions of other stupefied pedestrians stomping up from the depths of their evening commute, we keep turning our head slightly to the left in response to a nagging feeling that we're being followed by our drunken uncle. We strain to make ourselves believe that it's an errant reflection or minute imperfection in the lens of our sunglasses, but finally we are forced to admit that it's not our uncle, but worse, it's Jakub Kalousek. Jakub Kalousek is a bully and petty criminal who has a knack for making life miserable for those around him; his level of efficiency in this regard is so high that one would think there would be no pOSSibility for compromise with such a focused and determined character. But in spite of this almost quaSi-Germanic ruthlessness, he remains yet in possession of one Single saving grace: like the swollen-livered uncle who passes out in a fetid stupor in the children's swimming pool during the family picnic, he is in fact the most oppressed victim of his own bullying, making himself vulnerable and taking deleterious advantage of his own vulnerability in an efficiently practical way. In stark contrast to his actualized suffering, your sense of vulnerability, inflamed though it has become through the agency of Kalousek's cruel whimsy, remains merely thatsensation. That is to say, the Kalousek-inflicted events of your suffering and spiritual dissolution occur in your imagination, while his self-inflicted events are incontrovertibly extant in the physical realm as well as the psychological, and hence a kind of reverse transubstantiation, a manifestation of spirit made flesh? Suddenly, the notion of liberation through oppression seems like it might have a certain logic after all. One characteristic of Jesus Christ for which he is generally despised for, is that he died for our sins without having had the courtesy to commit any himself. What I mean to point out, anyway, is that at least Jakub Kalousek has had the decency to transgress the bounds of decency, ciVility, law and common sense on a regular (one might even go so far as to say professional) basis, and, perhaps as importantly, to be immediately and forcefully punished and humiliated for these sins. And while he has been so punished in public, it has been regular, pervasive and systemic punishment, and well-deserved, without the over-blown dramatics and obvious unfairness evinced during Jesus Christ's pilgrimage to Golgotha - an event pervaded by a Sickly-sweet taste of dilettantism, a kind of weekend-warrior "Sunday-sacrificial-lamb" aspect which has made Jesus, in the final analysis, the "King of Goody-Two-Shoes'." That is to say, while Jesus died once for our sins, Kalousek dies a little bit each day, for his own sins. Which one of these men would you rather share a bowl of soup with? Jesus' diSciples apparently realized that their marketing plans might suffer from this saccharin crust; how else to explain Matthew's and John's obviously revisionist attempts to bolster Jesus' depth of character by blatantly inventing this spurious business of a "dark night of the soul" in the "Garden of Gethsemane" on the "Mount of Olives?". As the "suppressed gospels" of Simon and Jeraboam make painfully clear, the only mountain of olives the generally Sickly and sedentary Jesus was likely to climb was the one floating in the "Ocean of Martinis" Jesus was known to "swim" from time. And the "Garden of Gethsemane" in which Jesus was alleged to have spent a "tortured, sleepless night" was likely either a local pub [the "Garden of Gallipoli" in Simon, "Goldman's Garden" in Jeraboam] or the "secret garden" of Gelsomina, a local faux-naif vixen who was also alleged [qUite enthUSiastically so by Simon] to have an ambitious and resplendent pair of "olive mounts."
My point is that while Jesus managed a fairly "cush gig" involving loaves, fishes, boat rides and foot-baths until his handlers and public relations flacks decided that a messy, fatal and histrionic carnival was in order, Jakub Kalousek, even in the midst of his most public suffering, gives one the distinct impression that, magnet for public humiliation though he is, the man ,suffers even more in private! One cannot but suspect, upon peering into Kalousek's twin whirlpools Scylla and Charybdis which tunnel out of the region normally reserved for eyes in lesser men, that beneath that weathered, handsome face, within that dark soul, lies a deep and gloomy spirit where countless ships have found their graves. Even in those manic, extroverted, bullying moments which Kalousek is notorious for, his audience and victims alike are keenly aware that he is filled with the suffering of the ages, that he suffers for us as much as he suffers for himself; suffers most, it seems, while alone in his cavernous studio in the midst of the psychological hell he has made for himself. When he torments us in public, it is with our unconscious consent, and he suffers along with us in an orgiastic "ritual of transcendence" through mutual, consensual cruelty. And this is really the key point; it is Kalousek's socio-personal criminality which removes the false veneers of encrusted compromise from the battered armoire of human existence, strips all the excuses away from the guilty fact that we are here, alive, now, in all our petulant, childish, venal, useless glory. His whole approach to life is based upon this sense that only through the inappropriateness of criminality can we be free. Kalousek's behavior affirms the inappropriateness of spirituality in the modern world and celebrates that inappropriateness as an absolutely necessary intrinsic condition of spirituality and as the dark secret of spirituality's power and significance in relation to this world. This is where Kalousek's work sublates to to the ancient greek concept of "Benevolent Anarchy". I have so far focused on Kalousek's behavior without reference to his artistic production primarily because both are irrevocably forged together in the same impossible bonding process which links us to him. He suffers for us and we suffer because of him and we love him for that. But to acknowledge this love to the larger world puts us at great risk, because, once again, it is inappropriate and deeply spiritual. In the same, Kalousek's artistic production is rude, bullying and inappropriate, putting us at risk by inflaming us in the same way that his actual presence does. Just as his social behavior is
unpre~ble
and aggressive, his art production invariably involves spontaneity and aleatory
intervention. His most consistent practice revolves around scribbling, making everyday notes and observations onto a large 100% acid free museum board covering several of his desks. Eventually these sheets are filled more or less completely with a certain denSity of line and hue, at which point they become tools no longer of his subconscious; he transfers them to his drawing table and begins filling in areas, conSciously adding drawings and/ or collage elements, playing with line and form in a more intentional/less benevolent manner. Eventually, a "drawing" is reified out of chaos. These finished draWings are terrible indeed to behold; they are reminiscent of scenes of an unsuccessful surgery, as if the surgeons of consciousness had attempted to repair damaged hieroglyphs scratching their way out from the dungeon of the subconscious And more than just unsuccessful (of course) surgery, this is the off-handed scalpel-waving of a team of drunken surgeons who not only have no doubt that the surgery will fail, but who are dead certain that they themselves will die from it. Their incisions are thus motivated by desperation and fatality rather than any humanitarian or empirical impulse.
Yet at the same time these drawings are filled with poignancy and amazingly non-cynical exuberance akin to a childlike sense of wonder. These inner "doodles" are made public in a way which reveals our contradictory relationship to our inner emotions and, of course, to our spirituality. Other work exhibits a tendency towards pornography and visceral humor; these typically ugly, obscene, quasi-scatological extrusions of paint have as their dominant motif [and in a sense, dominant function] the smegmatic b ullas and pustules of our own "inner fluids" . Kalousek's other criminal projects include ridiculously inept pseudo training videos for the most mundane of activities such as constructing cardboard boxes. His camera's lascivious focus almost never strays from the svelte figure of performance artist Scott MacLeod (a kind of St. Peter as played by Buster Keaton) as he struggles vainly with a box constituents: flaps A and B and lid C. Again Kalousek provokes unsettling emotions related to man's inability to be man, while simultaneously pushing the homoerotic envelope towards a giant red mailbox of complete embarrassment. His Fagin-like imagination crawls out of the camera, oozes off the canvas and stalks us in our streets and homes. He corroborates his intentions by serious actions . On occasions, he hired a diamond-blade concrete saw, cut out and stole a section of roadway to prove his aesthetics. Once again his criminal removals and insertions put society and ourselves in danger. And himself in danger as well. He has defaced gothic architecture of De de la Cite, vandalized a luxury jetliner, broken social codes relating to sexual behavior, and endangered his (child) ren, all in the service of his obstreperous "transcend or perish" spiritual quest. And what have his punishments for these transgressions been? To name a few obvious ones that most of us would consider an ill-lucked, well, he's been censured by historical preservationists, had his work dismantled, wiped by flood; he had been forcibly escorted to, and from airplanes in handcuffs, he had been beaten by jealous ex-boyfriends, mauled by a bear, and forced to teach volleyball to Venezuelan inmates to preserve his virginity. There are other ones that Jakub Kalousek himself stratifies higher on the scale of trepidation, but those would not necessarily make us pity him more. We love him for his frailty and intentional lack of judgments, his "idiot savant" pandering of sacred and profane borders on brilliance, and his refusal to accept "no " or "yes" without a question mark for an answer makes us shiver. His art makes us jealous of his courage and freedom, appalled that he might be speaking to us; makes us try to convince him not to, and secretly applaud when he does . His unsentimental pushiness and nurturing self-destructiveness strip away all our petty dainty facades and compromises, in order that we may experience true faith for what it is - that lucid combination of stark terror and giddy communion, . and not unlike Jakub Kalousek's own definition of art as "a mere figment of presence wanting to live its past vicariously". Witold Dlaha, Marseille, January 1996, (author of ilLes Pomps Gradual" and "The Squab')
re-printed from "Konvertible", # 15, 1996, "The Work of ]akub Kalousek, "Benevolent Anarchy", and T he Revenge of the Natural World",
(translated from polish by Anna Pribyniak)
A TENSION TO (sic)DETALE
(POZOR, NOS KE DETAjLU) "The scripture is unalterable, and the opinions are often merely an expression of despair on the part of the commentators. " Franz Kafka, "The Trial"
Finding your way through the world of Jakub Kalousek's work requires the patience of a turtle and the sensitivity of a carnivorous plant. Prompted by my own curiosity, and stark unawareness, I had decided to "delve" surreptitiously into Jakub Kalousek's drawings. However, even with the above mentioned predispositions one cannot entirely vouchsafe that the pivotal idea in Jakub Kalousek's work will be chanced upon. Utter a sir:gle word about Kalousek's art and you are invariably led to a crossroad with signposts that pose not the question "Which direction to take?", but rather forebode an alarum: "How did I got here?"!' .. (c.f."de-tale"). Canvas, paper, particle board, or pigskin are for Jakub Kalousek "tabulae rasae" to wallow and even regurgitate on, and to position sudden spasms of ideas alongside tobacco spit, love letters to creditors, as well as highly decorative renderings of Jakub Kalousek psyche he himself refers to as "spam". One can track the seemingly irrational course of Jakub Kalousek's hand and/ or mind from the "incarnation" of one quaSi-theme [an upside airplane] to another, [a cabbage-like animal figure] etc., until their suave deaths in the inhuman denSity of oppressive marks somewhere at the drawing's edge. First, Jakub Kalousek's drawings consist of a myriads of almost blasphemous building blocks that are intrinsically beyond the descriptive faculties of every known language: rabbit ears are constructed out of a Visa credit card self-adhesive sticker that then extends over a subtle watercolor transition field from pink and cerulean blue. A vitriolic plume of brute black arch is partitioned by a white grease pencil line, of which flatness is Vicariously reenacted by thick orange acrylic streaks straight on the white desolation of the marauded museum board. They mix, they mingle and interweave unceasingly in a maze of stories that decimate our over-fatigued eyes. This is not Jeff Koons' ephemeral applause for some shock-driven art world, Jakub Kalousek's drawings are comparable rather an equivalent to the barely audible crackle of retinas singed by a "Keep
Looking?" iron brand. And this indelible scorchmark "designates" us as a part of an ever growing herd that is blindly groping about, as if in disbelief, in a constant process of the (sic)" de-tale " (i.e. un-story) . In short, Jakub Kalousek's art evinces a hierarchy of interdependent sequences, marks, and patterns joined among themselves via a network of two distinct means of discourse . And yet each particular pattern, is, eo ipso, already a series of marks atavistically related each to other in a repetitious manner over a period of spaceltime [we cannot conceive a pattern without acknowledging the reiteration of the motif from one end to another] . fig . a) "If Authenticated ... #98" (detail)
In Jakub Kalousek's drawings this pattern reigns in a rather haphazard way. The crisscrossed vibratos of densely packed, yet singularly identifiable lines (fig. "aU), function as a selfcontained pattern. But as a whole, it becomes a discrete element in the larger pattern of the encompassing scenic scheme. In other words, "we can think two thoughts at the same time, but we are only able to act on one of them at anyone time, but what happened in that other time defines the essence, the spirit, the culture, the sublime, or whatever one wishes to name the "unnameable" . The other recurring and structurally irreplaceable element in Kalousek's work is the dialectical dependence of his art on language, on both, a formal, and a structural denotative level (written text/phonemes versus written/drawn marks, lexical connotation versus, graphic denotation, etc.). The dialectical movements among the text and drawing point at us, and bind us to the object by hinting at our own responsibility for having set the object in motion - a dialogue is instigated, sequentially stimulating innermost reflections, as in Kalousek's favorite quote from Greek antiquity: "Gnothi seauton - Edizesamen emeoyton".
I. •
This is not unlike a textual figure which the
Czech philosopher, Jan Patocka employs in his world view: "The woI1d is one of potentials, all of which are mere correlates of a potential to suffer or act, which, in turn, are related to what the initial potentials focus upon, what meaningfulness they convey, this overall meaningfulness being a facet of specific life strategy, or an order to which it is related. Thus the world, while remaining one of general potentials, hence comprehensible to all, is still infested with "specificity", as a result of which the woI1d is wholly impossible without subjectivity and the discovery of the world, the uncovering of matter which arises from it, cannot happen otherwise. And it is simultaneously the individual key which always implicitly opens the latent universal totality of matte1: " 2 Jakub Kalousek's drawings seems to corroborate this very theme of "specificity" as their underlying "logos". And Jakub Kalousek's vision is inextricably linked with the literary text that he so fastidiously employs even to the point of allowing it, together with himself, to develop into a fully-fledged building block of his images. Text becomes an ornament devoid of specific identity, and yet it gains structural functionality in the general potential while preserving its specificity. Jakub Kalousek's work offers teeming cesspool for a ceaseless elucidation of our own interpretative processes. Abstaining from all superfluous philosophical scrutiny, the crucial question posed by Jakub Kalousek's works probes the possibility of the coexistence of synchronized and temporal .perceptions. Writing these pages has quenched some of my own conjectures as well as, perhaps, those of my readers. Even so I am still in state of (sic)" de-tale". For, as another czech writer, Vaclav Havel aptly puts it: "Wisdom and culture are brought about, and function spontaneously, mindlessly, and without a plan, as if being quasi "by-products " of concrete and real labor,' never though, they do constitute in itself some pUlposeful program or objective.
"3
Francesca Urbino-Fichone, Institut Castrogiovanni d'Arte e Magica Contemporanea, Citta di Carbone,
(Translated from the Italian by Ewa Koroptew) 1) Herak1eitos - "Talk in Regard to the Nature of Being", Herrman & Sons, Prague, 1993, translated by Z.Kratochvil and S.Kosik 2) Jan Patocka, "0 Smysl Dneska", [Of Meaning of Present Times], p.77, Rozmluvy, London, 1982 3) Vac1av Havel, "0 Lidskou Identitu" [Of Human Identity], p.199, Rozmluvy, London, 1984,
"Pilfering Inferno #55" mixed media on paper, 1993-1994,32 x 40"
I
I
"Grey Matter Subsistence #84" mixed media on paper, 1994 -96, 32" x 40
If
"Pleaded, (Though Not Matched) #60" mixed media on paper, 1993-1994, 32" x 38
II
"Dreaming, in Theory # 122" mixed media on paper, 1994-95, 28" x 36"
"Innocence Bliss Shift #89" mixed media on board, 1994-95, 28" x 36/1
"Wailing in Lime #82" (Paramedikova laska) mixed media on paper, 1992-94 , 33" x 45"
"Desaturated Opprobrium" (Zlavfrovani pika) mixed media on paper, 1996, 28" x 35"
"If Authenticated ... #98" (Hovet vrtulim) mixed media on paper, 1996, 31" x 41 "
"Interlocking Features" (Zpropojeni vyrazu, mezi jinym) mixed media on paper, 1995, 32" x 421/
"
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i
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"Steep Learning Curve" (Zapej vetre,jak tetrev... ) mixed media on board, 1997-98, 32" x 40"
"What? ... Me? ... "(Co?, ... Ja?) mixed media on paper; 1996-97, 40" x 60"
"Big Wait for the Big Ball" (Cekam na balon) mixed media on paper, 1996, 40" x 60"
"Self-Incriminating Stamina" (Co treba potreba se vypotrebovat ... ) mixed media on paper; 1997, 32" x 40"
"Le Flaque" (Lokac) mixed media on paper; 1998, 32" x 30"
"Contrite Indices" (Cisla piskla) mixed media on paper, 1994-96, 26" x 34/1
"Documented and Defined Organically #84" (Organicky zneklidneno) mixed media on paper, 1994-95, 32" x 41/1
"Midnight }..1anhattan Blintz" (Jak Tamp6ny ... )
mixed media on paper, 1998, 33" x 40"
"Pig-Meant It, Not Ruled ... " (Nejjemnejsi linkaje fez do masa .. . ) mixed media on paper; 1997, 32" x 40"
II
"Parochial Harmonica" (Vecne zaplavena hebkostl) mixed media on paper, 1996, 28" x 35"
''You Are Just Afraid to Look at My Pictures" (Prubeh kalifornskym medem horem) mixed media on paper, 1998, 26" x 33"
"Rabid Meteorite #142" (Dulezitost nezapominani myslenek) mixed media on paper; 1991, 9" x 12"
"Magic Vessel" (Dffcf manzeta) Iris print with digital disk recording, 1998, 6" x 8"
"Magic Vessel" Six stages from a digital disk recorder in the auto redraw mode
I,
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Stage I. - 11 minutes
Stage II. - 39 minuts
Stage III. - 51 minutes
Stage IV. - 1 hour 3 minutes
Stage V. - 1 hour 22 minutes
Stage VI. - 1 hour 41 minutes
"My Drawings Are Like Apricot Pits An excerpt from an interview by Cheryl Blaine (Simultaneous translation by Kent Schlappka, reprinted with a permission of "Shiftin' Quarterly")
C.B It is rather hard to detect an external influence in your work. Have there been other artists and aesthetic movements that you would consider influential in your career as an artist ? J.K. Most of my detectable influences come from not well known artists and thinkers, if you would call them artists or thinkers at all. Genetically, and by default, I honor my father's aesthetic heritage, There had been a few idols in my initial learning of the craft, but they all faded shortly. I amsure, though, ze clovek tu a tam slapotu najde. C.B. What do you mean by "genetically honoring your father aesthetic"? J.K. Well, in other words, I believe, that your genetic make-up doesn't allow you make you just any aesthetic choice by free will, it delimits the scope of the choices by defaulting to your genetic model when you don't wish to transcend the authentic state of thought. C.B. What about your "mother's genetic heritage" ? J.K. My mother is an art critic. C.B. I understand, ... are you then aware of this genetic heritage assumption when you actually paint or draw? J.K. I think I could not paint then, although I am convinced that I regress occassionally to this state during the process of creation. It is inevitable. After all, as Thomas Mann said, "One must have died if one is to be wholly a creator". Although, on the other hand, I think, that the actual process of creation is just an ephemeral singeing spark. The rest of the process is vapid speculation or spurious inertia. In either case, they are overally determined by the genetic traces. C.B. You use words "speculation" and "craft", as if the artistic creation would be devoid of the muse, or, at least, the brilliant, ingenius and unique? J.K. I think that the etymological origin of "crafty" is a little bit more flattering than the original meaning of the word "art". This is, in fact, a reason, why usage of ready-mades and found objects as well as collages found such a frugal ground in the contemporary art world. Ready-mades are, in a sense, embodiment of the absolute infinite negation of art-world and that is, presently, the dominant aesthetic. c.B. But you are using in your drawings stamps, stickers, and other found objects as well? J.K. Yes, I had adopted this aesthetic as a subordinated element in my paintings, and, true, I admit it, I had been influenced. C.B. So, in your eyes, the art world is regressing? J.K. No. This is only a natural dialectic of the human intellect to fight the ever encroaching entropy by subordinating, or making from one dominant category a sub-category of other opposing sub-categories that define as a whole, as a new set of categories, a new dominant category. Figuratively speaking, it is kind of building a taxonomical pyramid aptly described in Umberto Eco's article called, I think, "Repetion and Innovation". C.B. Knowing your work, how do you start each new painting? J.K. I make a mark, .... or if I leave the blank paper nekde dlouho lezet, tak se vzdycky neco rozleje nebo rozmazne. C.B. Where do your titles of drawings originate, do you know what the piece is going be called before you start ? J.K. Most of the titles are contained in the drawing literally, all of them, of course, figuratively, nevertheless I do occasionally rename my work during the course of its creation.
C.B. Whys some of your pieces have names in different languages having a different meaning in each language? J.K. Well, when I say" pink", in english, how do you know that I mean the same thing when I say
"ruzova"? C.B.
Why "pink"? You know, pink, like, for example,: sunset, miplast, roastbeef, plamei'iak, zubnf protezy, Cadillac, marmelada, robin redbreast, cinch, lipstick, dasne, pampers, praci prostredek, nuk-nuk ... G.B. O.K. .... Still, it seems that the titles of paintings always seem to play an important role in the overall concept of your work? J.K. Yes and no! Usually, as I said, you can find its title written somewhere in the drawing anyway, so it is just putting cream on the top, or, ubrousek do sprchy, so to speak. C.B. Do you ever use an eraser? J.K. Have you ever tried to count the hair on your head, comb them, and then try to count them again? ... Pro vas bych to udelal, pred tim, ... i po tom. C.B. That would take a bit more time than I have for you, but can you tell me how is it related to your work? J.K. My paintings attempt to integrate into their own formal structure various apects of their own historical evolution. Dating, writing notes, exercising a wrist, and other forms of a time stamp pertaining to a particular historical period of the piece are all intended to create a temporal depth in the visual structure. This is also a reason why I started to experiment with digital media and digital prints. G.B. Your digital disk recorder walls, CD ROM drawings, and iris prints, capitalize on temporality that your two dimensional mixed media work is concerned with in very different manner. Isn't it self-negating to present the actual development of the drawing in the temporal form ? J.K. I do not think so. It is true that my drawings do not contain plot and in that sense they do not have narrative. But in the metaphysical sense, unfurling of a drawn line is in itself a narrative process, though more like a musical score. Furthermore, these drawings are conceived so that the original print and the video record of the drawing reification that is being continuously replayed, (for example, on a large plasma monitor) are placed somewhere in vicinity of each other. Hence, there is this dynamic play of referencing the finished work with its relative past being juxtoposed concurrently in the same space-time continuum. It is my intention to create this oscillating suspension between two modes of perception, two thoughts in one head ..... C.B. I see an amalgam of dreams and real experiences being stratified throughout your drawings. Is it possible to see such polarization in your work? J.K. Should we distinguish? ... I am glad someone shares my vision ..... C.B. Do you prepare sketches for your drawings before starting a new work? J.K. I do not sketch. All my sketches are contained in the actual finished painting. My sketches are intended to become one of the pillars in the act of creation. Without their presence the paintings lack of authenticity, message becomes skewed, vile and obscene, eventually bringing about the fall and pulverization of truth and legitimacy. G.B. In the chaotic compositions of your drawings, it appears as if one line more or one less makes no difference. When do you decide that a drawing is finished? J.K. When hammering a nail in, how do you know that a nail is really deep enough .... perhaps when your hammer starts breaking the sheetrock wall around the nail. You do not decide when a piece is done, you know when it is done. Though, to the contrary, I consider the finitude of creation in art as endless. I, myself, sometimes, come back to a piece and add or change some details, understandably, to the horror of the owner or the gallery. C.B. I feel that under the chaotic structure of your pieces, among innumerable lines and shades, there is a deep sense of cynicism intervowen with humor. Would you want to induce such perception by your work in the viewer?
J.K.
J.K.
I can offer you one of my collector's, and friend's, Mamie "Manka" Saunders', comment, who, seeing my work, starts to grind her teeth and proclaims: "Your drawings are like apricot pits ... seeing them they make me to chew on them until they "crack" and your mouth cavity starts to twitch and writhe with the bitter taste of their seed, yet at that very moment, a strange sort of realization or apotheosis jinxes your mind into a glorified ecxtasy when you realize how much stronger your teeth will become" ... and in fact her teeth are in excellent shape even after sixty. C.B. Roger Majzner, in his article on "Rough Roads - Journey to Paradise" exhibit at the Pomona Raceway Center Gallery, describes your drawings and prints as: " .... epiphany of anarchy in visual expression of contemporary art". Would you tend to agree with such definition? J.K. Anarchy is when one line intersects another line, in one word: "an interception". It was, I believe Brancusi, who said :"If they give you ruled paper, write across". The trouble is, however, that the word "interception", as well as the word "anarchy", is only a single word. Therefore, it is unable to express formally a relational structure such as a "subject-predicate" form as in, e.g.: "a line intersecting another line". So, in anarchy, I believe, one who draws the line should be also the one who "rules" the given paper. C.B. It could be then said, that a line, rather than a hue, is, the 11lOSt rudilnentary building block of your imagery? J.K. One South American Indian proverb says: "Why is a cut into the flesh the finest line one can make? ... Because you can see it only when the wound grins". C.B. Are you saying that the line precedes the color? That sounds like heresy. J.K.. The saying pertains to the ritual of the Guaquil Indians on Rio Orinoco in Venezuela among whom a body is decorated with drawings that are carved into his/her flesh. When you cut yourself with a sharp blade, even though you are bleeding, you are not able to see the actual laceration. Such a wound will heal pretty much without a trace. So the Guaquil Indians rub into the images carved onto their flesh ashes and an extraction from the mating secretion of a certain species of toad. This way the wound heals cleft and the skin grows together in deep relief. The meaning of "grin" in the proverb is some kind of pun. C.B. Would you want to draw into flesh? It's been done. J.K. That's rather obscene ... G.B. J.K. True, but as Jean Baudrillard says in "L'autre par lui-meme", :" ... we are fascinated by the obscene. But ecstasy is the opposite of passion.". Have you tried piercing, for example? C.B Well, yes ... I haven't noticed any? J.K. C.B They are actually under my dress. J.K. Nestydite se ale za ne? G.B Of course, not, You can see them easy when I go swimming ... J.K. Rad bych je videl? C.B Well, if you show me your skin carvings I will, ... but not here. J.K. Budem ale muset jit na nudistickou plaz, protoze moje nejsou jinak videt? C.B That'sfine, I don 't have a swim, suit with me anyway. J.K. Bezva. Kousek odsud je Grey Whale Beach, ... Bohuzel se tam platL Redakce by vam to ale mohla proplatit. Muzete se mne jeste zeptat na spoustu vecf? C.B Let's go! ... v
... A Silver Volvo station wagon languidly pulls out of a dusty parking lot of the RockawaJ Bowling Center, traverses Highway One southward, and disappears in Devil's Slide curves . ...
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SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 1998 1998 1996 1996 1996 1995 1993 1991 1991 1990 1989 1989 1988 1987 1985 1985 1984 1983 1982 1981
Galerie Gema, Prague, Czech Republic ODC Gallery, San Francisco, U.S.A. Galerie Zamek Klenova, Czech Republic Gallerie Bri. Capku, Prague, Czech Republic Sightings Gallery, San Francisco, U.S .A. Shooting Gallery, San Francisco, U.S.A. National Technical Muzeum, Prague, Czechoslovakia 509 Gallery, San Francisco, California Canessa Gallery, San Francisco, California Kala Institute, Berkeley, California Colwell Theater, Fort Mason, San Francisco Galerie Mladych, Prague, Czechoslovakia Atholl McBean Gallery, SFAI Alumni, San Francisco Union Gallery, University of North Texas, Camerawork, San Francisco, Atholl McBean Gallery, San Francisco Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco Bay Area Printmakers, Melbourne, Australia CameraVision, Los Angeles PhoneBooth Gallery, San Francisco
INSTALLATIONS/FILMS 1991 1990 1989 1988 1988 1986
l.International Art Festival Prague, Czech Republic XII. International San Francisco Art Institute Film Festival 6. Zurschaustellung Produkte, Rosenheim, Germany, West Coast Cinema, Museum of Modern Art, New York "Collaborations", The Lab, San Francisco, "ALEK", San Francisco Art Institute
AWARDS/GRANTS 1993 1991 1989 1989
Frans Masereel Grant, Belgium Arts International/Rockefeller Foundation Grant Ann Flannagan Grant, KALA Institute, Berkeley, Marin County Film Festival.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS Biblioteque Neif, Pont Sur, The Foundation Center, San Francisco Institute For Nominal Change, San Andreas Del Mar National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic Sierra Club, San Francisco University Art Museum, Berkeley Imagine Center, San Francisco
Edited by: Cheryl Stehno, Cassandra Binge-Berger, Phoebe Gloeckller, Scott Macleod photography by: Karin Lusk, Jindra llIzex, Rufa Pilufa Consulting: Ferdy Nichich, Foray's (AAAA) Studio additional translation: Vlasty Potach scanning: Wagner StudiO, pre-press: Silen Bloch printed by: Gel1la Art General sponsors :(listed eo pmetori) Gel1la Art, Air Condor; Elevator Film&Video; Law Offices of Fabrique, Crichon &Jedle, New World Power Generation, Wagner Studio,
special tbanks to: Nicola Heyring, Ramon Torrito, Hassan Fahti, Patricia Reskonvalenko, Emil Binkadot, Stewart Moxie, Jane McFarlane, Harkness Architectural, Annie Lemur, Phoebe Gloeckner, Scott Macleod, Alexandr Pozval,Jemima Stuyesant, Amost Wagner, Dundar Kalman, Chip Finch, and others ...
SK -VRG: 244-00529/44-sfl02 ISBN 80-86087-16-6
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