Jiri Kovanda
27 Jan - 24 Feb 2007
Jiri Kovanda
27.01.07-24.02.07
Jiri Kovanda was born in 1953. Like Jan Merta, he is Czech and lives in Prague. The discovery of this concept artist, who for a long time mostly lacked an international audience, has up to now culminated in his participation at this year’s Documenta. Despite this, Kovanda has already had a considerable influence in his own country’s art scene since his first performances at the beginning of his career in the mid-1970s. His keenly conceptual, artistic expressions are barely recognizable as such and teeter on the border of the invisible. He is fascinated by the ephemeral. His works assume a de-aestheticized form. Their strengths are based in a substantial usualness. Kovanda demystifies the figure of the artist and liberates the creative process from ossified, automatized practices. The performances that open his works obey terse directives and are little more than scantly perceptible interventions into everyday behavioral norms. He later transfers this form of minimalism to the world of things. His wood objects subsequently probe what conditions make an object into a work of art and differentiate it from an everyday object. One group of these works are ready-mades, for example pieces of furniture that Kovanda found and only minimally processed. In essence, his canvases do not show painting, but rather its citation. On the basis of the principle of collage, he combines materials and information torn from their context into cryptic, often humorous statements. It is precisely through the clarity and simplicity of his interventions that Kovanda refers unambiguously to modern or minimalist icons. Kovanda chooses a standpoint between citation and distance vis-à-vis these art historical positions with affectionate interest rather than irony. His objects can be understood as a translation of these references into a contemporary language or an interrogation intro their current relevance.
© Jiři Kovanda, Diptych II, 1996, dispersion paint on ungrounded canvas, each 25 x 25 cm
27.01.07-24.02.07
Jiri Kovanda was born in 1953. Like Jan Merta, he is Czech and lives in Prague. The discovery of this concept artist, who for a long time mostly lacked an international audience, has up to now culminated in his participation at this year’s Documenta. Despite this, Kovanda has already had a considerable influence in his own country’s art scene since his first performances at the beginning of his career in the mid-1970s. His keenly conceptual, artistic expressions are barely recognizable as such and teeter on the border of the invisible. He is fascinated by the ephemeral. His works assume a de-aestheticized form. Their strengths are based in a substantial usualness. Kovanda demystifies the figure of the artist and liberates the creative process from ossified, automatized practices. The performances that open his works obey terse directives and are little more than scantly perceptible interventions into everyday behavioral norms. He later transfers this form of minimalism to the world of things. His wood objects subsequently probe what conditions make an object into a work of art and differentiate it from an everyday object. One group of these works are ready-mades, for example pieces of furniture that Kovanda found and only minimally processed. In essence, his canvases do not show painting, but rather its citation. On the basis of the principle of collage, he combines materials and information torn from their context into cryptic, often humorous statements. It is precisely through the clarity and simplicity of his interventions that Kovanda refers unambiguously to modern or minimalist icons. Kovanda chooses a standpoint between citation and distance vis-à-vis these art historical positions with affectionate interest rather than irony. His objects can be understood as a translation of these references into a contemporary language or an interrogation intro their current relevance.
© Jiři Kovanda, Diptych II, 1996, dispersion paint on ungrounded canvas, each 25 x 25 cm