Jiří Straka

Ink Constructions

6.3.2014 - 26.4.2015

Václav Špála Gallery

Národní 30, Prague 1

Curator: Han Chunxiao

Opening hours: daily 11 a.m. - 7 p.m.

Admission: 40 Kč full, 20 Kč reduced (students), free for seniors and art students

‘Pure soul’ means freeing oneself from the ordinary world, the perception of the universe by means of a calm, dispassionate view. What is calmness? What is dispassionateness? This is similar to when Straka extricates the building site from the logic of building, he changes the primary logic of ‘things’ and rebuilds the relationship between the subject and the world. The ultimate form of expression of this relationship is the ‘territory’ in which the subject begins a new existence – a change of reality into emptiness, and thus the creation of a perceptual field (viṣaya). It is precisely in this way that the frame of observation, which was newly expressed by Straka’s act of painting and by the object of depiction, changes the real state of everyday experience into an empty ‘site of experience’. In connection with this, rather than saying that painted art works are what is shown at Straka’s exhibition, it would be better to say that this approach to observing things is what is shown, together with the visual selection, which the painter has made with regard to the building site. It is clear that this ‘sphere of emptiness’ is far better suited to ‘looser or tighter, empty, and pale’ ink painting than is ‘conscientiously affirmative’ oil painting. It is probably also something that Straka, who is a Westerner but has lived and studied in China for a long time, has gained as his other harvest.

Han Chunxiao