Jiří David - Metastases

Jiři David
"Metastases"

In the frame of Warsaw Gallery Weekend: 29.09-02.10.2022

Exhibition on view: 29.09-15.11.2022

Metastases of Art

"Kdyz hukot more drazdi klitorisy bohyn" - Jiri David

Jiri David could be the protagonist of a short story by Milan Kundera; he could have acted in an early Milos Forman production, or got written up in a column by Mariusz Szczygiel. A phenomenal figure of the Czech art scene, he has been making regular appearances in Warsaw for several decades. Each time is a surprise, and the audience's consternation is augmented by the question: Who exactly is this Czech guy? On the occasion of his new exhibition at the Le Guern Gallery, one can try to understand David by placing him in relation to our domestic field of contemporary art. To approximate the identity of this outstanding artist, one must take a pinch of Libera's sarcasm and Gorna's critical fervour, add Dawicki's tart melancholy, Potencja's collective yet painterly passion, and a scandalous, politically incorrect element borrowed from Sobczyk or Sobczak. David is a politically sensitive observer: a quarter of a century ago, he was creating photographic portraits of weeping, penitent personalities like Vladimir Putin, John Paul II, and Gerhard Schroder. David is a controversial scandalist: he regularly writes letters and manifestos, engages in protests and mobilises the community against sluggish institutions, the arrogance of public officials, and cultural politics. David is an incorrigible opportunist: he fights the system and questions nationalism as the Czech Republic's representative at the Venice Biennale where he confronts Mucha's fundamental series in an almost empty pavilion. David is a lyrical existentialist: he writes and publishes poems, photographs his family, creates minimalist objects, and paints expressionist paintings. Last but not least, David is a liberal ironist: everything he does is a joke, but a serious joke.

The latest series of paintings reflects Jiri David's chimerical nature. The very title of the series, which in its working version reads "Metastases of God", is most evocative. Metastases sounds lofty but, to translate the Latin term into everyday lingo, it is about cancer. Oh yes, David likes to upend a taboo. In Poland, painting is seen as a commodity which sells well and is aesthetically pleasing. Painting can't be about cancer because painting is not critical art. Polish painting is eye-candy which works as decoration and may, at best, illustrate a noble idea. For David, meanwhile, the exhibition of a new series of paintings affords an opportunity to present a diagnosis of art as a cancer, a malignant one with metastases.

The late work of that Czech enfant terrible is not for everyone. As he would, David treads a fine line between absurdly divergent interpretations and he frivolously combines what seems totally incompatible. Following Slavoj Zizek, one could call the series "metastases of enjoyment" and read it from the psychoanalytical angle as a series about women: goddesses beyond reach, archetypal mothers, and fallen whores. David bluntly states that he is interested in "woman as a goddess and a whore". However, as an artist immersed in the Kabbalah, he feels himself a woman, wants to be everything and try everything. He has the right and the skill to do so. Cancer metastasis is like the spread of artistic enjoyment, understood in the Lacanian sense, along spiritual and sexual lines. Although David speaks about himself and answers for himself, in Poland his series could be considered a provocation aimed at both Catholics and feminists. David interprets his own inner states by illustrating them with found objects. David tops up artistic cancer with a god, but a Czech one, spelled with a lower case "g". A god he does not believe in but to whom he refers with the portraits of nuns he remembers from his childhood spent in the Moravian countryside. Worn by Catholic nuns, the habit serves as a pretext for creating a surrealist series with found objects and thickly applied paint at the centre. The series is based on computer-produced images of varying colours. They are actually not so much portraits as afterimages, not even of people, but of the artist's state of mind. David overpaints them, pastes and affixes associations, emotions and feelings to the pre-made background images; like a god, he creates his artistic tumours. Interestingly, most of the paintings iconographically refer to women and femininity. The girlish ponytail and gold badge evoke associations of innocence. Thickly applied black paint, arranged in the shape of the labia or, if you prefer, a mandorla, can be associated with pornography. It seems that in his latest series, David engages in dialogue with Mucha, the obsessive painter of women, and, like the late Drtikol searching for his mother, approaches nirvana. My God, you may sigh, how sad and predictable, the old painter wishing to return to the womb from which he emerged light years ago. Yes, it's so typical, but what great and inspiring works emerge from this desire. Not all the paintings are funny. Some disturb with the charge of aggression they carry: metal blades stuck in place of faces, bullet casings, hair cut off like a trophy. David is not particularly concerned with the viewer, and crushing criticism only makes him happy. He has never cared much about political correctness; instead, as an old, white, privileged man and, moreover, an expressionist painter who made his debut in the 1980s, he simply seeks and expresses himself. Yes, Jiri David is the opposite of Ewa Juszkiewicz, Martyna Czech, as well as Agata Slowak. The Czech artist is the polar opposite of young Polish female painting. With him, it's not "Paint, also known as Blood"; rather, it's "Blood, also known as Paint". On the other hand, perhaps the paintings of an old man could be a dialectical complement to the rising stars of our last few seasons, such as Czech and Slowak?

David's series is based on repetition. The variation on the theme of the faceless nun is absurd and playful. The paintings are inspired by David's poem, a kind of litany whose successive lines begin in the same way, with the word "When" followed by a psychedelic image. Some of the lines are serious: "When memories are without crematoriums", "When suicide is on the to-do list next to washing dishes", or "When the mind has the eye of a Cyclope". Others wax philosophical: "When you can't quit and you can't win", yet others show an erotic tinge: "When shadows of beauty dance in the eyes' erection". Perhaps it would be most appropriate to view "Metastases" with a page of print in hand. When you stand in front of a painting and read the lines one by one, silently or in your mind, like a prayer, you can understand Jiri David and get closer to Czech art. You probably won't find a god in the absurd altars of the old artist's private cult, but in Poland, a little litany addressed to a painting and imploring that the inevitable metastases should stop has never hurt anyone. In Warsaw, praying in Czech works best.

Adam Mazur

Partner of the exhibition: Czech Center