Lukáš Kalivoda, Quivering Surface (Chvění hladiny), glass, water, 2020

The work called Quivering Surface is a minimalist object – a rather tall glass cylinder filled with water to its brim. It stands on a platform so that its simple purity of glass with water making one shape together is evident in the space. At the same time, thanks to the platform, we can see the brim of the cylinder and also the surface level of the water at the eye level. An oscillator is located under the bottom of the cylinder, which vibrates the water surface. Slight ripples of the surface and shimmering reflections of gentle waves create an inconspicuous visual movement. We can perceive the events on the surface as an ethereally light, almost latent image hovering on the edge of substantiality as well as of our perception. If we observe these slow movements and small visual changes for some time, the work will gradually lead us to mental calm and a relaxed perception of fleeting and ephemeral phenomena.

Lukáš Kalivoda, October 10, 2019 (7. 10. 2019), oil, vinyl foil, 2019

In this exhibition, Lukáš Kalivoda is presenting a series of paintings created with a special technique – by picking a colour film from the water surface. For this reason, he also creates new ‘painting’ tools and develops non-traditional methods of artistic work. The basic ‘tool’ is a large metal cylinder, to the inner side of which he attaches a foil, a carrier of the future image. The cylinder is then filled up with water and onto the water surface paints are poured previously mixed with turpentine or other thinners. Their mixture forms a surface film, the actual basis of the image, which is then formed by the gradual draining of the water. As the water level decreases, the pigments are transferred onto the surface of the foil, the individual steps of draining the water subsequently creating a characteristic ‘line markings’ of the image.

Through the concentration of paints and thinners, Lukáš Kalivoda can control the resulting structure of the ‘painting’. The transitions are either smooth and gradually shaded, or the surface film may tear, creating a more expressively formulated texture. This latter is the case of the work titled October 7, 2019 – we can see a rather dramatic composition, the basic horizontal structure of the painting being disrupted by breaks or ‘teeth’ that cross the individual layers and interrupt their regular sequence. It is as if looking at an abstract glacial field in which various ice floes and breaks meet, forming from within an area of calm, yet convergently distributed forces.

Lukáš Kalivoda, February 6, 2020 (6. 2. 2020), oil, vinyl foil, 2020

Lukáš Kalivoda’s ‘paintings’ are a kind of material imprint of the time flow; a record of the few hours or dozens of minutes during which the painting is created. During this unique process, its characteristic horizontally-layered structure is formed. Each layer and its internal division presents traces left behind by a leaking liquid carrying a colour film on its surface. The basic composition is thus determined by a sequence of sediments, finer or coarser particles, which form a more or less cohesive environment of colour pigments, oil, turpentine and water. Kalivoda’s paintings record the moment of the creation of a unique visual sequence, they show the current course of water / time flowing. That is why these works are marked only with the dates of their origin. From tension and affinity within a mixture of paints and water, physical-chemical bonds and forces are born which, guided by the artist’s imagination and practical experience, give out the most important thing – the final image, in which the nature of its origin is combined with the activity of artistic intent into indestructible unity.

The image called February 6, 2020 is an example typical of this process: we see the basic, almost geometric division of coloured layers. These are further more finely structured inside and interconnected by small capillaries of colour pigments. Geometry, materiality and natural forms of growth or flow and elution form together a unity, which combines a clear compositional solution with a detailed and delicate, spontaneously created drawing. We can see a kind of geological form, firmly established, but at the same time permeated with traces of numerous diverse processes. Everything seems to have been here for a long time, but still alive and in constant motion. The paintings by Lukáš Kalivoda can work in such an ambiguous way, but there is no paradox: both tendencies – to remain unchanged and to change – are constantly at work in them.

Lukáš Kalivoda, March 3, 2020 (3. 3. 2020), oil, vinyl foil, 2020

For the final form of Lukáš Kalivoda’s paintings, it is important to connect technologically controllable methods with the openness of the entire creative process. Because everything takes place in natural conditions, even changes in ambient air pressure, such as before a storm or rain, also the properties of liquids change and, consequently, it influences the course of the paint transfer. From the point of view of technology, this is a border area where traditional methods (used e. g. by the old bookbinders, who prepared various ‘marble’ papers with the help of oil paints mixed on gelatin) meet with experimental and purely authorial techniques open to artistic intuition, similar to those which a watercolour or ink painter works with.

In these moments of creation, Lukáš Kalivoda is fully immersed in work reaching to the level of the finest pigment grains, descending to the level of microscopic processes which, on the one hand, are flowing through an ‘artificial trough’ of the laboratory-workshop process but, on the other hand, follow their own, practically inexplorable rules. From this combination of determination and incidence, control and freedom the magic of the whole result stems. What we see is the workshop of an artist-experimenter, who shapes natural processes in an almost alchemical way, in order to materialise the fragile and transient relationships of disparate liquids: paints, thinners and water.

Speaking metaphorically, the picture March 3, 2020 shows what the constellation of all the mentioned phenomena was that day. It is a complex, yet a uniform image, its fine structure naturally associates with large areas of coloured spots. The result is a compact scene in which the material conditions of the birth of the image itself seem to appear ‘of their own making’. Its fluid, aquatic character ‘pours’ freely into a wide panorama. A kind of underwater landscape or a cloudy, foggy field opens up in front of us to great depths. We sail or float in a space permeated by diffuse matter, below us we see indefinite, regularly wrinkled formations running towards the horizon. It is as if the complex technical and physical-chemical conditionality of the origin of the image has now disappeared, in order to make room for a sovereign gesture of pure artistic creation.

Jakub Jansa, Occult Table, print on etched mirrors, LED, 2019–2020

The Occult Table installation is an object that belongs to a series of installations, performances and video projections called the Club of Opportunities. However, references to this complex and long-processed series of art projects cannot be developed within the current, relatively intimate exhibition, so the work here functions more as a fragment referring to the absent whole. Thanks to that, it looks a bit mysterious and ambiguous.

On the reflective table top, three glass mirror balls with irregular annealing and a wooden, not clearly identifiable object are lying. The surface of the table is also a collage-like image: we see a photograph of a man holding a celery bulb, in the corner there is an elliptical ‘cut-out’ leading to the next dimension of the image. In it, we recognize a scene that is difficult to classify: celery bulbs lying on a pool table covered with plastic, two slot machines flash in the background. How do all these objects and scenes belong together? What do the celery bulbs represent? What is essential, what is an enriching adjunct to the main theme, and what is just a special add-on? We do not know this and this work gives no answer either. What we are left with is ‘only’ a set of objects, various hints and references, which the title Occult Table suggests to be something more than just actually exhibited objects or a kind of visual collage.

The combination of an artistically well thought-over set of artefacts and paintings together with the multi-layer possibilities of their interpretation creates the resulting work, an ‘object of difficult meaning’. This semantic and artistic ‘duplication’ is part of the author’s intention; he consciously works with a combination of complicated narrative and attractive visual. It is up to us whether we accept this artist’s game outlined as a challenge to complete and ultimately unify the work in our own aesthetic performance but, at the same time without destroying its elementary ambiguity. And perhaps it is in this multidirectional activation of our imagination where the secret of this Occult Table lies.