Jasanský & Polák
Guys
Artist
Jasanský & Polák
(1985, Praha), Czech
Original Title
Guys
Date1989-1990
Mediumsilver gelatin print on “Foma Dokument” baryta paper
Dimensions15 × 10 cm
Classificationsphotograph
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
Image Copyright
Jasanský & Polák
DescriptionSince the late 1980s, the artistic duo Lukáš Jasanský and Martin Polák have been documenting the Czech urban environment and landscape during its transition from the communist system to capitalism. Thanks to their characteristic conceptual method centered around the analysis of art and society, they managed to open new spaces for photography. Their relatively vast photographic series are based around a simple typology and archiving method, and beg questions regarding contrast. This gives their works a characteristic style.
The series Guys consists of twelve photographs (the whole series has fifty-one photographs), and each photograph depicts a man in semiprofile standing in front of a building or walking through the street. The series might give the impression of a sort of archive of the typology of man in different social contexts at the end of the 1980s, which shows us the dreary grey lifestyle lived in those times. Here, the image’s position as part of a series comes into play. The existence of a stand-alone image is aesthetically not impossible, but the full meaning is often not conveyed. It rather functions as part of a subsequent collective content, which is based on the essence of the message the artists intended to convey.
Lukáš Jasanský (*1965, Prague) and Martin Polák (*1966, Prague) first met at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in the department of photography, and since 1985 they have been developing their own conceptual method of collaboration. During 1986–1993 they studied at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. They at first created their personal work in mutual dialogue, but their collaboration is based in their shared perception of reality and their stances towards the technical nature of photography Both consciously resigned on the methods and values of so-called “artistic photography.” They express themselves by means of photographic cycles in which they employ principles of repetition, seriality and ironic distance. They thematise the stereotypes of commercial photography, but also process banal, ugly, and consciously pedestrian motifs. The duo of Jasanský and Polák soon became a fixture on the Czech art scene. Already before 1989, they were featured in their first foreign exhibition, and in the 1990s they exhibited at a number of important international exhibitions, mostly due to the efforts of curator Francesco Bonami.
The series Guys consists of twelve photographs (the whole series has fifty-one photographs), and each photograph depicts a man in semiprofile standing in front of a building or walking through the street. The series might give the impression of a sort of archive of the typology of man in different social contexts at the end of the 1980s, which shows us the dreary grey lifestyle lived in those times. Here, the image’s position as part of a series comes into play. The existence of a stand-alone image is aesthetically not impossible, but the full meaning is often not conveyed. It rather functions as part of a subsequent collective content, which is based on the essence of the message the artists intended to convey.
Lukáš Jasanský (*1965, Prague) and Martin Polák (*1966, Prague) first met at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in the department of photography, and since 1985 they have been developing their own conceptual method of collaboration. During 1986–1993 they studied at the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague. They at first created their personal work in mutual dialogue, but their collaboration is based in their shared perception of reality and their stances towards the technical nature of photography Both consciously resigned on the methods and values of so-called “artistic photography.” They express themselves by means of photographic cycles in which they employ principles of repetition, seriality and ironic distance. They thematise the stereotypes of commercial photography, but also process banal, ugly, and consciously pedestrian motifs. The duo of Jasanský and Polák soon became a fixture on the Czech art scene. Already before 1989, they were featured in their first foreign exhibition, and in the 1990s they exhibited at a number of important international exhibitions, mostly due to the efforts of curator Francesco Bonami.
