Although the activities of Stanislav Judl (1951–1989) represented a significant part of the Czech alternative art scene during the 1980s, his oeuvre is today known for no more than a few eyewitnesses. The key events of Judl’s artistic story basically span only ten years: he held his first solo exhibition in 1979 and committed suicide in February 1989.
The decade of Judl’s work equaled a complex turning point in Czech cultural history. The character of art work at that time was heavily affected by the non-standard sociological conditions from the outside and, from the inside, by the post-modern revision of principles of art work and the fundamental process of turning the sense of the arts into a relative concept. In the period characteristic of rejecting big narrative stories when, at the same time, the concept of the “absolute” lost its credibility, Judl still insisted on the obligatory nature of contents communicated through art. The post-modern “abolishment of values” was fatal to him: he was trying to find much more in art than it could provide – and, all in all, he probably sought for much more than it was in human powers. The contemporary exhibition, held in the Czech city of Klatovy, is the first attempt at summarizing his oeuvre.
“Stanislav Judl”
The Klatovy Klenová Gallery
8 March – 10 May 2009
