Jiří Skála

Jiří Skála (b. 1976) was a student from 1998 to 2000 at the visual communications studio at the Fine Arts Academy in Prague under professor Jiří David. In 2000 he transferred to Painting Studio II under professor Vladimír Skrepl.

Skála was originally a painter, but these days he is occupied with conceptual installations that reference formal elements in art history. His work represents a systematic exploration of the possibilities within the limited terrain of one topical language.
His final project for the year consisted of a paper clip relief that stretched over the surface of an ordinary office desk. He incorporates into his work the most ordinary objects that, instead of becoming ready-mades, lose all meaning when turned into artifacts. Skála also works with time. His object entitled 5 Seconds was a clear representation of that universal work of art that must have been invented right after human beings: the square side of an object spins and optically transforms into a circle. The packaged piece comes complete with a logo and is suitable for commercial use, as is Abstrakt (the above-mentioned administrative interior).
His detailed preparation of an object or installation as a product intended for consumption results from the effort to make contemporary art more familiar to viewers, to make something comprehensible and pleasant. By exhibiting a wheelbarrow with a rusty patch at the bottom, he draws attention to the beauty of the unintended, and to the easy perception of such joys. Each of these everyday images or memories of images can be varied, used, replayed in new forms, imitated, and stolen. Even their immortality can be appropriated.
Skála alternates the concept of offering art as a good-looking product with a similar principle based on a shift of the meanings of normally clear situations. Magazine photographs and advertisements provide inspiration, for instance the image of a construction site where bags of cement are placed on a shelf. He brings them into a gallery because we already know how well it can work.
Jiří Skála’s scope, however, is much broader than that (see “Jelení’s Mad Scientists” in the News Section), and above all he is able to entertain viewers. This is obvious when looking at the older color photographs he used as studies for his paintings, which in and of themselves could be considered independent artworks (Baby Goats). His latest attempts at imitating still life and landscape paintings bear a similar testimony.





lin

01.01.2001