Jiří David is a Czech artist born in Rumburk, he currently lives and works in Zbraslav, Czech Republic.
Czech painter, intermedial artist and educationalist. Co-founder of the art group Tvrdohlaví, his best-known media work is the neon heart above Prague Castle concluding President Václav Havel’s term in office. In the years 1982–1987, he studied figurative and monumental painting at Arnošt Paderlík's studio.
During 1995–2001, David ran the Studio of Visual Communication at Prague‘s Academy of Fine Arts and in the years 2004–2020 the Studio of intermedial Confrontation at the city‘s University of Applied Arts. In his journalistic work, he has long reflected on the position of the artist and art in society. However, he also speaks about current cultural, social and political topics.
oil on canvas
mix medium on canvas
J. David, J. Jonášová,
V. Pivovarov, M. Roztočilová
Whisper of the Body
The inaugural exhibition at the newly opened JSP Art Gallery will be a mutual dialogue across generations, gender and genres. World-renowned painters of mature age in an artistic dialogue about the metaphysics of the body with two talented young sculptors. The connecting axis of the authors is the body as the gateway to the mysterious realms of the spirit.
Exhibiting Artists:
Jiří David
Josefína Jonášová
Viktor Pivovarov
Magdaléna Roztočilová
Curator: Jaroslaw S. Pastuszak
Co-curator: Jiří David
October 18 - December 18, 2023
Art lives under great pressure from the „determinants“ of this world and its „wisdom“. At more than any other time in history, the artist is condemned to solitude and to the persuit of one’s own kind of „super-reality“/„super-objectivity“, because apparently these cannot be immediately expressed. In a heroic, but tragic way, the artist tries to discover the long lost secret in the chaos of the world‘s matter.
Cubist defragmentation and abstract annihilation of the face of the earth present the artist with a choice between living in order to die and dying in order to live. In a desperate desire to bring light into the darkness, the artist neither copies nor imitates, but creates forms capable of receiving an ideal substance. art, in its supreme pursuit of grasping the elusive, leads to a vision of the fullness of the ontological Mystery‘s being. The body becomes the path to this goal, the only „certainty“ in the entire span of uncertain existence. one grows into the role of „shadow in the cave“ and breaks down existential scepticism in relation to a long lost meaning. The artuist whispers into the ear of a receptive observer to see through them. It becomes a „portal“ to the impenetrable pools of the secret of the spirit. If art has an objective character and aim, then it must inevitably come out from the captivity of its own subjectivity and humbly humble itself before the impenetrable Mystery and, despite all the determination of matter and the enforced death, (in the words of Viktor Emil Frankl) say yes to life. Life manifesting in the Whisper of the Body is, paradoxically, the way to its objectification in a work of art. Diverse forms of artistic expression have one thing in common, and that is the „secret of life“. In different, often antagonistic forms and different ways of its interpretation, the artist through one‘s art tries to break free from the slavery of objectification and deterministic, self-enslaved by solitude and isolation, subjectivisation. That elusive thin line between sense and nonsense is the means of the artistic search for the true essence of being, despite the fact that today it is often expressed by its opposite, i.e. the absurd. The aim of this exhibition together with the collective concept of JSP Art Gallery is to show such artists and art in such a way through their work, strive to prevail over the deterministic antinomy of life. I wish every visitor to the gallery finds the courage to enter through the offered open portal into the realms of subtle being and impenetrable Mystery, to listen to the whispers of the body and hear the mysterious language of the “Logos“ divine wisdom.
