Jiří David

“I created the sculpture called “Corpus Angelicus“ as a part of an exhibition of the same name which I had at Prague Castle in 1997. An angel is a constant theme for me, this mysterious being is actually present in all religions. It is a sort of a positive, ecumenical symbol and I am enticed to shape it and give it various forms and constantly retransform it. An angel has probably never been seen before but we may believe that it exists in some form and this always stirs my imagination. That is why “Corpus Angelicus“, a sculpture made of robust cast steel, in contrast to the notion of a totally unknown and elusive ethereal being. A sort of shell of the Angel, it can be understood like this. But I leave it to the viewer. I am glad that the object be installed in Břežany near the monastery and I hope that it will give joy to the citizens and maybe also a reason to pause and think.”

“I created the sculpture called “Corpus Angelicus“ as a part of an exhibition of the same name which I had at Prague Castle in 1997. An angel is a constant theme for me, this mysterious being is actually present in all religions. It is a sort of a positive, ecumenical symbol and I am enticed to shape it and give it various forms and constantly retransform it. An angel has probably never been seen before but we may believe that it exists in some form and this always stirs my imagination. That is why “Corpus Angelicus“, a sculpture made of robust cast steel, in contrast to the notion of a totally unknown and elusive ethereal being. A sort of shell of the Angel, it can be understood like this. But I leave it to the viewer. I am glad that the object be installed in Břežany near the monastery and I hope that it will give joy to the citizens and maybe also a reason to pause and think.”

Václav Havel: Truth and love must triumph over lies and hatred. This legendary statement of Havel's continues to carry not only a moral imperative, i.e. a form of recommendation or example of commitment, but despite its seemingly utopian message, it is a fundamental human idea and aspiration. The vision for the building itself was conceived in 2012 and was not realised at the time for many reasons. However, its basic idea has remained unchanged, i.e. when the human (Havel's) voice metaphorically, but in its 3D representation, penetrates impermeable walls, concrete barriers, etc. That is, through some kind of internal and external barriers, misunderstandings. This symbolic process of breaking down the walls of evil with the power of the voice, with the power of non-violence, with the power of understanding, with the power of togetherness, thus carries the ethos of freedom and value responsibility. It also evokes the capacity of human good will not to shrink from evil and, on the contrary, to help resolve the misunderstandings that arise, to be heard. Negate aggression, humiliation, contempt, or various surviving evil atavisms in their extreme forms. It is a message that holds our civilization against all manifestations of hatred past, present and future. Prof.ak.mal.Jiří David

Václav Havel: Truth and love must triumph over lies and hatred. This legendary statement of Havel's continues to carry not only a moral imperative, i.e. a form of recommendation or example of commitment, but despite its seemingly utopian message, it is a fundamental human idea and aspiration. The vision for the building itself was conceived in 2012 and was not realised at the time for many reasons. However, its basic idea has remained unchanged, i.e. when the human (Havel's) voice metaphorically, but in its 3D representation, penetrates impermeable walls, concrete barriers, etc. That is, through some kind of internal and external barriers, misunderstandings. This symbolic process of breaking down the walls of evil with the power of the voice, with the power of non-violence, with the power of understanding, with the power of togetherness, thus carries the ethos of freedom and value responsibility. It also evokes the capacity of human good will not to shrink from evil and, on the contrary, to help resolve the misunderstandings that arise, to be heard. Negate aggression, humiliation, contempt, or various surviving evil atavisms in their extreme forms. It is a message that holds our civilization against all manifestations of hatred past, present and future. Prof.ak.mal.Jiří David

DEINSTALED 31.8.2022 (horizon, spacetime, human memory) Ad. 1 Horizon: In 2006 I was invited to the Sakharov Center in Moscow, where I presented large-scale photographs from the Fifth Seal series in a solo exhibition. The Academician Andrei Sakharov Centre has been operating in Moscow since 1994. It specialises in mapping the crimes of communism and includes an extensive archive on political repression, the history of the GULAG labour camps and their victims. Ad.2 Space-time: By an extraordinary coincidence, I was staying in Andrei Sakharov's apartment at the time of the opening of the exhibition. In the apartment that became his last home after his return from exile in 1986. The apartment where Russian intellectuals, artists and dissidents gathered until Sakharov's death in 1989. No one else lived in the apartment until then, so everything from the coffee spoons, dishes, clothes in the hall closet, the gramophone record, towels and soap in the bathroom, the kitchen tablecloth, the ashtray on the window and, of course, the books have remained unmoved in time since Elena Bonner, Sakharov's wife, left the apartment. Ad.3 Human memory: I spent several days and nights in this unique environment. And then, one evening, my gaze fell on the catalogue I had brought with me and suddenly became aware of its chilling contextual connection to this apartment. It was the 2002 catalogue No Compassion, which included 18 photographs of prominent world politicians of the time crying. I implanted them with my tears. Among them was Vladimir Putin. I couldn't help but take advantage of it, everything was pointing in that direction, and so the weeping Putin began to "wander" in all corners and tucked away corners. He peeked out from behind doors, pillows, lying on the window sill, on the dining table, from the bathroom mirror, and even from the outdated microwave. I couldn't escape it, it attacked my naked body. He was everywhere. Thus a series of photographs were necessarily, inevitably taken, but never exhibited anywhere since then (2006). Only now, after 16 years, on the occasion of the Czech season in Dresden. In a city that is again closely linked to the unfortunate activities of V.Putin, as he was a KGB officer there. It was here, in Dresden, in the second half of the 1980s, that an agent of the Soviet KGB secret service was starting a family, saving for a car and dreaming of a career as an elite spy. The fall of the Berlin Wall changed his situation completely, and on the evening of 5 December 1989 he was still on the phone to the Dresden Red Army garrison demanding that tanks be sent. Shortly before, a crowd of demonstrating East Germans had tried to occupy the KGB building.   Epilogue: In conclusion, I would like to return to Andrei Sakharov's wife. Bonner was the first signatory of the anti-Putin manifesto "Putin must go" published on 10 March 2010 > and continuing in a series of demonstrations.  

uninstalled (absolute zero, at which all particle motion stops) Art is in its superposition, that is, it is and is not existing due to an external observer whose sense perception determines how it really is. It exists or takes place in a process at a certain point only on the basis of probability after it is observed... When, therefore, we are no longer sure whether art is alive (has meaning) or dead (has lost its meaning), we are not sure what is or is not in the container (i.e., in a kind of capsule or shell of mutual agreement, a vault, but especially an incubator). Whether it remains forever hermetically sealed in absolute zero (impregnable, uninhabitable) for the environment(perceiver, observer), leaving only ideas present, or unfulfilled expectations, desires, space for metaphorical sharing? Or does it ever manage to be reasonably opened and its contents seen revived? But is it not completely empty from the beginning, pretending to be full, to be fulfilled, to be meaningful? To whom is it addressed, where is it going? Is the hoisted white flag really a sign, a present symbol of final defeat, collapse, surrender, a sign of death, or is it, on the contrary, a tactical manoeuvre into the future? In other words, is what we are seeing, and precisely because we are seeing it, art in process? Probably yes, for art capitulates and thus necessarily simultaneously emerges. This conscious, or controlled, capitulation makes contemporary art present not only within the anthropological vision of the observer's subject. When, in a closed space, subsets of form with changing shapes emerge independently, which then stage speculative illusions, traces of parallel activities in desires for intense proximities. This is followed by a time of a priori visibility, i.e. the presence of art at its centre.  

uninstalled

Uninstalled