1.1. — 31.12.2020

Sculpture Line
Olomouc 2020

Ape-man looking up into the sky symbolizes the springing up of ancient civilization; today, high civilization brings advanced material culture, yet the nature we live on is being damaged unceasingly. The perplexed eyesight and innocent face of ape-man reveals the desire to correct all of these faults and to step towards a brighter future. The title originates from my sense of social reality. I express my upset towards the deviated part in the ocean of civilization we live in with this series of works and appeal for more attention to beautiful things.

You must live with the Creature

Sculptures can be made in different ways, but making a big statue is a story in itself. Just one year after graduating from Gabriel's sculpture studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno, Jan Dostál, a very young sculptor, has embarked on his 12-meter high work, his biggest so far. The motive is the Creature, a figure and non-figure at the same time, assembled and welded from pieces of sharp iron which is the material the sculptor lives with and loves. A model for the Creature has its prototype if we can call the prototype a statue which is two and a half meters tall. According to his own words, Jan is assembling his huge, really huuuuuuuge Creature starting from its feet. The anthropomorphic shape on the border of an abstract expression is distinguished by Dostál’s handwriting, full of sharp strokes and cutting angles. It has its visual background in a contemporary sci-fi world as well as in a tattoo subculture or it is a reflection of late sculptural modernism. The Creature is magnificent and comes to light so that Jan Dostál can reveal his strange, iron, sharp universe, his aesthetics which he lives with and which lives in him as Alien who you certainly cannot get rid of. However, it is also magnificent to weld a splendid sculpture, piece after piece, without an accompanying drawing, according to one’s own imagination, using a sculpture-like crane of one’s own design and production. In this case, art has a chance to enchant and surprise and this is not just by the size of the Creature. Welcome to another world.

A sculpture of the Large Yellow Octopus was created for no particular reason, for the pure joy of nonsense, in spite of probability; for the belief that large yellow octopuses exist; if only because they should exist.

The sculpture is a part of the FAT cycle. The whole cycle is dedicated to author‘s fight against the inconspicuous and silent killer – sugar which harms him as well as millions of people around the world. The size of the tongue shows enormous craving for sweets which is even highlighted byirresistible pink colour of cakes. For the auhor, this is the way to deal with addiction and point out both the social problem and the need to fight this deadly trap.