28. 1. 2021 - 7. 3. 2021

Vystavující: Jakub Roztočil

Kurátor: Adam Hnojil

The work of Jakub Roztočil can be characterised using three key words: sound, matter and harmony. Given that he is primarily a procedural artist, this trio, along with other variables, would also be applicable dialectically. Sound in its various guises, e.g. tone loops, is both stimulus and starting point. Matter is represented by paint, underlay, sculptural material and machine. The outcome of research should then be harmony, for which the principle of chance and error entering the staged process is fundamental. This imitates the conditions that are associated in the intellect with the cosmic order.
Most of Roztočil’s works were created with the help of a device, without the touch of a human hand, as a kind of lively dialogue between the artist in the role of demiurge and the machine as mediator of thought. He is interested in the adventure of revelation and emanation using mechanics. In this case he is both the percipient, but also he who is part of that which transcends him – nature and the universe. He evokes being in non-being. This is the artist’s desire to search for existence, his own place in the world and in culture using generated art. Roztočil poses ontological questions as he attempts to define and interrogate the flow of linear time. He lays great emphasis on the importance of rhythm, regularity and cyclicity. He is interested in what will be disrupted if randomness appears in the complex gears of the universe in which one finds oneself during the creative process. The movement here is a paradox, as it avails itself of the physical properties of a set medium and observes chance. In this respect it is close to the phenomenon defined by the Eleatics.
His approach is very close to the principles that Constantin Brancusi introduced into sculpture. At a certain stage of his work, Brancusi yielded to conventional sculpture and consciously entered into a dialogue with nature by attempting to find new forms that would be in complete harmony with it, without thereby becoming a commentary on events in space and time.

The exhibition is accompanied by a bilingual publication summarizing the author’s work in recent years, supplemented by a text by Adam Hnojil, curator of the exhibition and art historian Barbora Kundračíková, together with an author’s text by Jakub Roztočil about himself.