Pavel Kryz
Microscopic contexture of paintings. M. Juříková, 1996, "9X", Pecka Gallery, Prague
The painter Pavel Kříž (born in 1959) exhibits in the Gallery Pecka from July 15th to August 4th. He belongs among the interesting solitaires of our contemporary scene of fine arts. His presence in this gallery confirms apparent and sympathetic efforts of its owner and the curator – Jaroslav Pecka – to make presentation of remarkable personalities standing off the mainstream and working aside.
At the very beginning of his professional journey, Pavel Kříž took a stand at the opposite pole then most of his generation in the eighties. He focused on contemplative painting summarising the experience from the urban landscape structure. Heavy, earthy tones became lighter very soon and his paintings showed an atmosphere similar to meditative graphics of Mark Tobey. However, this basically calligraphic technique has always a supremely individual brushwork and expression. Laboriously and attentively developed structure is not missing in his paintings up to the present. In 1994, he introduced himself by an interesting project in Nová síň where he used a photographic portrait for the first time. He wrapped the multiple portrait of one of the first American movie star – Gloria Swanson – with sparkling blue action texture. At that time, he was considering the problem of identity through the famous but in the media less exploited celebrity. Serial duplication of an antiquarian portrait of this soulful and mysterious actress provoked oscillation between both, the lost, lapsed time and the actual time passing by. Also his paintings from the cycle called Nine X exhibited in the Gallery Pecka come from similar impulses. Unlike in the “pilot” project, the author works with other nine archive portraits in it. As the title indicates, he intends to radically deny the identity this time. It disappears not only by multiple duplication of and manipulation with the picture, but mainly under the mist of complicated partition of author’s brushwork. Each portrait is accompanied with a specific ornamental raster and a colour chord. Only some portrait details remain not covered by ‘spider’s web’ of ink and brush strokes, and their repeated view forms an organic part of the texture of each painting.
Kříž concentrates again on the process of painting creation as in the past before this presentation in Nová síň. Despite, his painting is not only a nice content of skilfully and sensitively piled up structures. The author is capable to apply many levels of his own visual experience in it that fixes all remarkable structures around us – in the landscape as a whole, in the nature and its details, in subjects and their fragments. However, it is not only the energy, which the author produces almost a microscopic contexture of his paintings with, what pulses towards the viewer. At the same time it intuitively reflexes the feeling of uncertainty and doubts of authenticity, originality and identity that would affect us together with a light sentiment from appearance of the past identity.
Magdalena Juříková