Contemporary Central European Art [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 138-154]

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VICTOR H. MIESEL
it became clear that here were political and broadly cultural statements
which might have dreadful implications. Kolir's fractured looking images
were deeply disturbing. They were not just tradition reactivated, made
interesting again by the application of a clever technique. They looked
like suffering images about suffering which additionally could be interpreted as statements about what was happening to culture understood
secularly as well as religiously. Looking at them was like looking into a
magic mirror cracking to pieces. What sinister thing was lurking behind
that glass?
In any case, a whole wall dedicated to the Passion of Christ, a kind
of wailing wall, pushed attention away from aesthetic contemplation.
It was there that I turned back to leave the galleries in order to look again
at Emilie Benes-Brzezinski's huge figure which was hanging in the stairwell
leading to the exhibition. When I had first seen it, I had seen it obviously
as an evocation of a crucified Christ but it had impressed me more as
an artful introduction to anxiety, the feeling, and Anxiety the show. It
was a ragged, paper mache corpse, gray like ashes and without a halo.
Incidentally, the installation of the exhibition was outstanding, close to
being too good in the sense of being too theatrical but that could not be
helped-that is to say, so many pieces had so much presence, had so much
dramatic and tragic presence, that I am persuaded that the excellence of the
installation was a matter of avoiding theatrics in order not to compromise
the solemnity of any work. A second look at Benes-Brzezinski's figure
inspired awe and inflicted pain. Majestic as a rood cross it was nonetheless
a carcass.
Back in the galleries it was clear that religion, or the evocation of
religious feeling inextricably mixed with human and all too human concerns, confronted one. It was a confrontation that had little to do with
consolation or any sort of relief. Had one no place to hide? There were
Bielawski's paintings Cross I and Cross II. They had a muted beauty and
were visually subtle works which could engage attention in ways linked
to what someone like the New York school, color-field painter Ad Reinhardt
did back in the '60s. They were also distinctly different with a wonderfully
agile scribbling which gave to emblematic stasis-the crosses-the excitement
of highly kinetic energy. But in this exhibition these crosses would not
perform as Ad Reinhardt would have wanted them to. There would be
no hushed, transcendent, I'art pour I'art solace. Traditional religious
references and beauties of color, texture and craftsmanship-the craftsmanship was without exception excellent-frequently coincided but the results
did not flatter anyone's sense of security. Branko Ruzic's Icon, carved
with brutal exuberance and mounted upon crude cement blocks, looked
like a locked door and dark as death. Ales Vesely's icons were delicately
golden but their pale, scuffed surfaces made them poignantly fragile and
melancholy looking, as if they might be fading away.
Ji'i Kolar, The Station of the Cross (1965).
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