Jiri Voves “Inscriptions”
Czech Center New York / The Bohemian National Hall
This event has ended.
A thought and an idea materialize as a visible sign. Memory incorporates itself as an insistent record capable of surviving the extinction of its own civilization. Transience finds a form that lasts an age. Not even the march of centuries makes this fragile voice fade.
Can one truly depict something that continually recedes, elapses, disappears? Can the miraculous whirl of sand, snow or living beings be somehow reinterpreted in art, literature or music? It can, but first one must learn to see things from the inside, not from the outside. The heart of things cannot be reached through their outer surface; on the contrary, their inner essence manifests itself through an often enigmatic outward semblance. Artists who weave the consciousness of this fact into their work ensure for themselves an inexhaustible source of inspiration.
Light and darkness cannot exist without each other. They determine each other, alternate with each other and communicate in an ever-changing dialogue. The same is true for order and chaos, growth and decay, sadness and joy, solitude and friendship, freedom and confinement. Everything, both the visible and the invisible, is linked in a continuous and rhythmic whole. One only has to read between the lines; matter and spirit, a fleeting moment and eternity are not opposites but are inseparably joined like the interconnected elements of a music score. Quivering signs and lines devoted to paper by an inspired hand bring to life a joyous harmony of opposites that belongs to all humanity, not one single nation or race.
With each step we take, we are surrounded by messages of existence. To distinguish them, we need silence and inner concentration. The flight of a flock of ravens is such a message. What could be a more paradoxical phenomenon? A fluid cloud of barely legible dots, each of which is an individual creature. The raven – that ‘social loner’ which, according to legend, oscillates between the living and the dead, an evocative reminder of mortality, though also an embodiment of universal yearning to travel, as an unfettered soul, wherever we wish.
In the self-imposed seclusion of his studio in an old house in the countryside near Prague, Jiří Voves draws, paints and etches his signs and codes. His introvert, contemplative nature speaks to us through an artistic language of subtle touches and interventions. In his work, he reveals the deepest layers and contexts of existence while acknowledging their inalienable mystery. The fundamental characteristic of Voves’s art is a kind of ‘tranquil unease’ that represents not only a symbolic portrait of the essence of being, but a means of fathoming its infinite complexity.
~Richard F. Drury
Media
Schedule
from November 12, 2014 to November 30, 2014
Opening Reception on 2014-11-12 from 18:30 to 20:30