Foreign words, which generally discourage the general public from reading artistic and scientific texts, should not be a tool for pseudo-intellectual posturing, but rather an irreplaceable tool for describing phenomena that transcend the everyday. Art is precisely such a phenomenon in our lives, and therefore, to explain what is taking place, for example, in the photographs of Ivan Pinkava, a basic vocabulary alone is not enough. If certain terms—for example, those from the poststructuralist lexicon—are not merely used and repeated ad nauseam as a fashionable affectation, then the search for the right expression to describe complex relationships within an artistic composition can lead us on an adventurous journey through time and space—a journey of discovery. Ivan Pinkava’s photography exhibition also invites us on such a journey, for in our effort to penetrate beyond the surface layer of his human bodies, accumulated materials, or atypical piles of objects, we transcend the categories of simple descriptions of beauty.

In Plato’s late dialogue *The Sophist*, we encounter the concept of intertwining (symploké), which has been unjustly neglected in art theory. The philosophical term symploké (“σύν” [syn-] – prefix: “with,” “together,” or “in unison” / “πλέκω” [plekó] – verb: “to weave,” “to entwine,” or “to interlace”) can be used to describe the mutual connection between, for example, objective reality and subjective perception. At the core of this word lies the encounter between the unreal and the knowable, but also the encounter between an abstract idea and its materialized form. These confrontations constitute the very substance of every work of art. Ancient philosophy employed a textile metaphor to emphasize the benefits of combining seemingly disparate elements into a meaningful whole. Art often presents us with the difficult task of uncovering, within a tangle of external incompatibilities, the code of internal interrelationships. However, it would be a mistake to assume that every work of art possesses such a disposition, just as it would be naive to assume that every painting or sculpture necessarily seeks to express the complex aspects of human existence. Artists weave from the diverse threads of individual inspirations, yet the resulting fabric may also reveal their disparity. This makes it all the more rare to discover a work whose power lies in how the artist has managed to weave an internally cohesive fabric from various strands of thought.

Ivan Pinkava’s photographs are aesthetically captivating, yet their form is not merely a self-serving exercise in construction and composition, nor a superficial conveyance of predictable content. Using an artistic language that he has refined over the years, Ivan Pinkava creates visual texts with a recognizable artistic signature; yet it is only between the imaginary lines, on a sort of intertextual level, can one discover those rare connections—that is, the interweaving of surprising realities. The iconography of his works may tempt one to seek superficial analogies from art history and to attempt a simplistic deciphering of the message conveyed by the nude figure, but the fact remains that behind the stylized poses of the photographed figures and the still lifes with layered surfaces of various materials and textures lies a tension that is almost physically palpable. In dramatic lighting, bodies are staged just as much as mundane textile fragments, gathered fabrics, synthetic foams, chairs, furniture, plants, or tarps, boards, planks, and beams. Anonymous spaces of a liminal nature serve as the setting for a static moment interweaving of the concrete with the supernatural. It is fascinating how the polarity between the form of objects and the content of ideas is visualized in Ivan Pinkava’s photographs. The result is never merely a trivial object—a simple shot of a roll of foam or a spread-out rug. Beyond the materiality of each of Ivan’s objective constructions lies a poetic dimension of existence. 

It is striking how Pinkava manipulates the human anatomy and, conversely, how he composes lifeless matter. In his extensive series of nudes—which are, in principle, portraits of subjects—we find, on the contrary, the essence of inanimate objectivity. It would be incorrect to claim that the male bodies in Ivan’s photographs are empty forms, instrumentalized to passively fulfill random, static scenarios. Rather, it is a mythical transformation of the human being into other states of sensually perceived existence. To describe this phenomenon, we will draw on other concepts, such as cosmomorphism and anthropomorphism. For when the degree of human transformation reaches a level of almost soulless objectivity, we speak of cosmomorphism—that is, a situation in which a torso or limb becomes a compositional tool, a material serving a specific purpose. In the opposite process, Pinkava is able, through his photographs, to breathe character into ordinary objects—that Benjaminian aura of individual authenticity. In such cases, we speak of anthropomorphization, that is, the humanization of inanimate objects. Each of these transformative phenomena in Pinkava’s work creates different prerequisites for understanding the resulting interweaving, as the point at which a cohesive image emerges from heterogeneity. 

To clarify the paths to understanding the meanings of these photographs, we will use a navigation system guided by the coordinates of three distinct artistic interventions by Robert Bielik, Julie Hayward, and Frenzi Rigling. In three distinct chapters, external elements corresponding to Pinkava’s photographs are situated, each within a different qualitative parameter and based on a different philosophical concept. The chapter Proskynésis / προσκύνησις deals with the tension between the human figure and the ritualization of a historically significant gesture. The chapter Diafora / διαφορά, the focus is on the transformation of the body toward a cosmomorphic structure, and in the chapter Paronymos / παρώνυμος, the focus is on revealing how Pinkava imprints a state of being onto non-human substances. If, after touring the three floors—and thus the three chapters—of the Špála Gallery, the interweaving – symploké of the diverse elements of Pinkava’s works into a coherent, meaning-rich image becomes somewhat clearer, then the goal of this exhibition will have been achieved.

Curator: Miroslav Haľák