The exhibition is partially conceptualized into four semantically and formally interconnected domains, in which artifacts and narrative strands are concentrated in the central key theme. They suggest connections between the visual or sensory stimulus and its logical, abstract transformation or perception. It is based on a subjective, philosophically generated strategy, where phenomena of the present and the absent coexist in relationships simultaneously, inseparably, and ambivalently. The authors together demonstrate their ideological intention through several media outputs, primarily in installation, 3D objects, and painting.

The extensive spatial site-specific installation Labyrinth by Jakub Cmarko uniquely addresses the universal question of the relationship between man and the environment. A system of vertical iron (roxor) rods, densely grouped like a maze, suggests, or represents the barrier of a non-existent solid wall. The barrier – wall is present and at the same time absent. In the background, in associative layering, the work can also be read as a reflection on overcoming invisible obstacles in achieving goals. Another, in this case, joint installation “Corpus”, points to the natural bipolar dimension of our existence and explores the suggestion of the relationship between the human body and the spiritual identity of man, confronting, in the author’s terminology, the “material body” versus the dematerialized “living body.” Plaster casts in the performative process of creation copy the physical silhouette of the figure or its fragment, specifically a person within various physiognomic and generational compositions, including the self-identification of the authors themselves. However, they remain as a kind of shell without corporeality, without immediate human physical substance, and of course, they do not reflect the natural spiritual aspects of human beings, their unique personality profile. The plaster box here serves as a specific reference to the real existence of an individual person and their (absent) unique spiritual integrity.

“Horror Vacui” presents a collection of expressive figurative paintings and drawings by Magdaléna Masárová, which relativize the relationship between emptiness and content in the artwork. The artist’s “emptiness”, externally visually absent space or incomplete shape formulation, the unfinished picture (absence) is replaced and supplemented by abstract logical thought. However, the viewer’s perception of the work intentionally may not be identical to the author’s idea. The fourth domain within the project, dealing with present absence, focuses on a selection from the numerous sets of small-scale reliefs. They are created on a base of plaster imprints of the original, authentic structural “drawing” in clay, mechanically taken from various objets trouvés and historically, architecturally, or naturally interesting locations with a unique genius loci, destroyed by ages, forces of nature, and man. They represent testimonies of various (absent) times, which, through personal joint authorial reinterpretation, co-create a multilayered presence.

Božena Juríčková