Exhibition

Libuše Jarcovjáková

Date
Vernissage 09.09.2021 18:00
Curator Lucie Černá

How does an obsessively visual curator describe an exhibition by an artist-photographer?! Words replace images; feelings and ideas are formulated in sentences that should make universal sense. 

Should they?

The exhibition Ach (Alas) is a visual pilgrimage. A pilgrimage through places and situations. It assaults our consciousness and brings us, in our thoughts, to places where we have perhaps been in our lives. But it is not certain. The images engage in play and cluster into mental maps. They create impressions that each of us can translate in a thousand ways into our own language without words. They affect our brain like small electric shocks, bringing it to life. For some people, they push the boundaries of perception a little bit further, while others shift nervously from one foot to another, waiting for a lifeline – one they won’t find in this text. 

Photographer Libuše Jarcovjáková is known for the distinctively visual, sparkling, direct style with which she captures her life and the situations that are simultaneously, (in)dependently happening around her. She says that she feels as if they were happening only because of her. Strips of 35mm film or digital clusters of rapid shots tell us about the autopilot hidden somewhere inside. On her travels, she explores the structure of unconscious processes. Sometimes she does so descriptively, with precision and in sequence, but often it is random, based on feeling, done in quick snapshots. She returns to the same themes over and over, exploring them from various angles, finding them in a number of different forms, different circumstances. 

The exhibition is designed to be a physical representation of the conscious/unconscious processes in Jarcovjákova’s work. It is a manifestation of an impression. It is solid and yet fluid. It escapes like a quickly caught fish in a creek. It is a bird in a garden by the sea. A memory. An unwritten poem. A profound feeling that has faded away. A daydream. 

Libuše Jarcovjáková is a photographer who sees beyond the Looking Glass. She captures situations that may stun us by their ordinary and understated nature, and yet we see that feet are not what they seem to be. Her work is something like photography’s fifth taste, umami, giving it a much needed twist thanks to which it suddenly has a visible sense. 

Lucie Černá