Photographs by DuSan Simanek Photographer Dušan Šimánek as if stood on the division line between what is, in our country, perceived as artistic photography and the so-called art which employs the medium of photography. We mention this to explain why he is not too well-known either in photographic or artistic spheres, even though his free work is remarkable and his photographs are part of many significant foreign collections as, for example, Centre Pompidou in Paris and JCA in Tokyo. In Czech lands in the 1980s, Šimánek exhibited with the circle of kindred artists around theoretician Anna Fárová. In the 1990s and later, he presented himself only several times (in Prague, it was in the New Hall/Nová síň gallery in 1993 for the last time) with the today legendary group Silence (Ticho) by large-dimensional photographs of almost abstract walls of deserted houses in the Prague neighborhood of Žižkov. The present exhibition brings a narrow selection of the artist’s recent work and it is also organized on the occasion of the publication of a small monograph by the Torst publishing house (edition FotoTorst). The monograph documents the selection of various Šimánek’s cycles which have never been publicly presented before. The works on display originate from two recent Šimánek’s cycles. The cycle entitled “Windows” includes large-dimensional photographs printed on special graphic papers. Similarly as in the previous cycles, they bespeak of the artist’s continuing interest in abstract images lifted out of the surrounding reality. “Windows” represent reflection of glass – windows, shop windows, façades – with the entire arsenal of symbols that are part of them, but more in the painterly spirit. Everybody will appreciate the painterly character of the photographs at first sight. As if the aim here was not to capture interesting places and details, but to transform them into a form which puzzles a viewer – the observer does not know what he exactly sees, he is not sure whether he looks at a speculation, an accident, a “life” photograph or a computer manipulation. What is in stake here, however, is a non-manipulated photograph, a technically precise work; finding visual details and waiting for light and time and, subsequently, technical procession through a classical form. The cycle entitled “Multiply” contains extracted images with naïve ornaments which were created by photographing details of plastic tablecloths and by their subsequent printing. Here, the medium of photography serves as a mediator between an industrial product and artistic original. The resulting print is a weird pseudo-image; it is an appropriation of the banal. If we should describe the content of Šimánek’s images, we cannot omit his constantly modernist conviction about the power of vision, about the possibility of positive spiritual message. He, as an observer, does not use any post-modern and post-production tricks; he believes in the possibility of subjective viewing, the possibility to extract visual parts from reality, which can be “solely” transformed onto surface via the medium of photography. Even though the artist’s methods from the recent time also include conceptual approaches, crucial role in his oeuvre is still played by his personal experience with everyday reality, with images of reality. He does not photograph reality – he creates a self-sufficient world which is more or less reminiscent of it. Šimánek selects only what is in harmony with his integrity. Dušan Šimánek “Stand by” (photographs) Nostress Gallery 11 June – 31 August 2008 Curator: Helena Staub
