Studio Valčík: Time and Timelessness
I once wrote
that Studio Valčík is first and foremost a family. By this, I didn’t
mean that it is simply a father and his children for whom creating
paintings, photographs, sculpture, arts and crafts, stationery and
calendars has been the primary focus of and raison d’être for their
lives over the past dozen years. We could certainly find many
similar examples throughout history and it would make no sense for
me to emphasize that fact on its own. But the fact that I have made
this reference more than once is because what I had in mind was,
that in this case the word “family” contains within it something
that links the meanings of something timeless, natural or to be more
precise blood and family ties with something institutional,
historical: i.e. something fixed in time. Some might object that
this is applicable to all families everywhere and is not restricted
to artists – and they would certainly be correct from one point of
view. But when I was referring to the institution of the family, I
was not taking into consideration any legal standards, social norms
or political representations of the family; rather I was referring
to a simple truth that is typical for small families of artists.
Studio Valčík is not only a family based on blood relations but it
is also a family art school, workshop, guild and studio all rolled
into one. My reason for discussing this is that I want to propose
that a special type of time and timelessness exists at Studio Valčík
precisely because of this multifaceted concept of family. When
speaking about time, I would not like to be limited to stories about
the times good, bad and horrible that we all experience and which
have certainly be experienced by the individual members of Studio
Valčík as well as by the Studio as such. Nor am I attempting to
create a chronological overview of Studio Valčík from its
establishment in 1993 through its most recent exhibitions in 2005 –
the list would certainly be a long one and would without a doubt be
quite interesting. I should also state that neither I am trying to
reconstruct the “external” history of Studio Valčík, the changes in
its makeup and location, the social and cultural events that have
impacted the Studio or those that the Studio itself has created –
though here again it would be possible to write quite extensively on
this topic and it would perhaps be very interesting to morph into a
general art historian and go through the archives. If nothing else,
this would certainly confirm the fact that Studio Valčík is not
something fictive or virtual but is a grouping that is an element of
the Moravian, Czech and even Central European communities and is
something that attracts attention, awakens interest, and provokes
reactions both positive and negative, all of which is evidence of
its remarkable nature. In the end, nor do I want with the use of the
concept of time to provoke a discussion of the origins, affiliations
or parallels, in short the internal historicity of the Studio’s
creations, even if such an approach would show much of interest. It
is most likely that it would show that in this era of reflections
and intersections between the media and installations, Studio Valčík–
in an approach that is “non-fashionable” and perceptibly
“anti-professional” – focuses on classic genres of painting and
sculpture that could be most widely seen at the turn of the last
century. We would also learn that Studio Valčík focuses on objective
painting and genres that at the present time are seen in “naïve”
rather than “avant-garde” art. I have no intention of developing
further this type of consideration, no matter how interesting it
might be. Rather, I would like to use the concepts of time and
timelessness to write something about each of the individual works
and creative approaches used by Studio Valčík. For example, how
Josef is an actor in time and history within this grouping – not
because he founded the Studio but because he is first and foremost a
being eternally dissatisfied and constantly searching. These
characteristics and motivations need to be explored in greater
detail, if for no other reason that senses of dissatisfaction and
exploration are shared by the other members of the Studio. However,
Josef Valčík is from the very beginning – and thus all the more
markedly so – quite different from his children in that he
externalizes his dissatisfaction and exploration, which manifest
themselves in technical experimentation as well as crossing the
boundaries between forms, moving from painting, drawing and
photography to sculpture. In contrast, Aleš and Magda internalize
their dissatisfaction and exploration, focusing on almost
imperceptible but for them very significant changes in painting
based in only one medium and almost exclusively in one genre. Time
and timelessness in the works of the Studio’s individual artists
also manifest themselves in accordance with which temporal and
timeless genres the individual artists focus on. If Josef’s
portraits, nudes, flowers, landscapes and abstract paintings
struggle with the possibilities of reflecting change, the same can
be said of Aleš’s seascapes and views of forests, bodies of waters
and coastlines, but it is less true for Magda, who paints with the
purposeful single-mindedness of a researcher into the still-life and
landscapes lacking any evidence of human movement. Time and
timelessness in the works of Josef, Magda and Aleš have yet another
aspect, one that has a related and yet differentiating nature: the
timelessness of painting methods, brushstrokes and techniques.
Josef’s gestures of time and the passionate movement of the
sculpture are focused on the timelessness of symbols, while the
watercolors in the flowing paintings of Aleš reflect temporality, an
ephemerality eternally repeating and timeless and Magda’s oil
paintings – differently again – link the timelessness of geometry
with small, quivering, temporary blotches. Time and timelessness can
therefore be said to create a characteristic nexus of differences in
Studio Valčik that would not be evident if Studio Valčik was not
also a family. Without that fact, it would not be possible to
understand the repeating seasonal struggle of Studio Valčík
expressed through changes and repetition of the seasons in the
medium of painting, for which movement and time are the critical
points.
Professor Marian Zervan, Ph.D. (b. 1952) is a theoretician
and esthetician in the fields of art and contemporary architecture.
I is the author of books of sacred iconography and as a curator has
organized exhibitions on Slovak architecture at home and abroad. He
has also written the catalogs for these exhibitions. He is an
assistant professor at both the Faculty of Architecture of the
Slovak Technical University in Bratislava and the College of Fine
Arts in Bratislava.
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