Josef Žáček
Image
Artist
Josef Žáček
(1951, Praha), Czech
Original Title
Image
Date2015
Mediumoil on canvas
Dimensions250 × 220 cm
Classificationspaintings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionJiří Žáček is a unique painter with an unmistakable spiritually toned painterly style based on semiotic symbolism and a reduction of shapes. Typical of most of his works is a reduction of color to various shades of grey and black, permeated by a distinctive luminism which imbues his canvases with a characteristic spiritual dimension. His technique combines drawing and painting with subsequent erasure, constituting a process of creation and temporal duration which underlies each work. The motifs of his canvases are reduced to substitutive symbols which transcend their visual presence and unlock a profound spiritual experience and contemplation of the surrounding world linked to primordial collective human memory and the depths of Christian humanism. Through these semiotic, metaphorical canvases, Žáček explores universal questions of cultural identity and memory as well as specific phenomena of today’s world which reflect social and political relations resulting from the transformation of a late-totalitarian society.
In this sizeable and uncharacteristically colorful work titled Image (2015), Žáček reacts to the cynicism of the media which ostensibly function as objective outlets while in fact reducing the public to passive consumers of information, thus suppressing their ability to formulate their own opinions. The monochromatic grey background contrasts the anonymous pink figure limply sprawled out across the canvas, generating a feeling of unease and a desire to uncover the meaning of the motif.
Jiří Žáček (*1951, Prague) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1977 to 1983. With his admission to the Academy delayed by the internal political situation in Czechoslovakia. He entered the art scene during the 1980s, but his abstractionist tendencies prevented his work from gaining official political backing, meaning he was not accepted into the Union of Fine Arts and could not freely exhibit. Although he was involved in the underground scene of the time, the age difference between him and his fellow artists rendered him an outsider who did not identify with the novel wave of postmodernism. In 1992, he displayed his work at the Pavilion of Arts at the World Expo in Seville, Spain, and from the 1990s onward he has regularly exhibited at museums and galleries across the Czech Republic. In 2017, a solo exhibition of his work was held at the Prague City Gallery.
In this sizeable and uncharacteristically colorful work titled Image (2015), Žáček reacts to the cynicism of the media which ostensibly function as objective outlets while in fact reducing the public to passive consumers of information, thus suppressing their ability to formulate their own opinions. The monochromatic grey background contrasts the anonymous pink figure limply sprawled out across the canvas, generating a feeling of unease and a desire to uncover the meaning of the motif.
Jiří Žáček (*1951, Prague) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague from 1977 to 1983. With his admission to the Academy delayed by the internal political situation in Czechoslovakia. He entered the art scene during the 1980s, but his abstractionist tendencies prevented his work from gaining official political backing, meaning he was not accepted into the Union of Fine Arts and could not freely exhibit. Although he was involved in the underground scene of the time, the age difference between him and his fellow artists rendered him an outsider who did not identify with the novel wave of postmodernism. In 1992, he displayed his work at the Pavilion of Arts at the World Expo in Seville, Spain, and from the 1990s onward he has regularly exhibited at museums and galleries across the Czech Republic. In 2017, a solo exhibition of his work was held at the Prague City Gallery.
