Exhibition

When composers want to create emotional intensity or movement in piece of music, they often employ ‘harmonic dissonance’. This is a combination of tones that clash and create tension. Something you find in Bach’s fugues or Chopin’s mazurkas. This jarring is an interesting parallel to the latest body of paintings by Tadeáš Kotrba. Paintings that juggle tranquillity and unease, contemporary realism with the stylized imaginary, humanity and the landscape it inhabits.

The inspiration for the Czech artist’s work often begins in his personal life – notably photographs gathered when taking a walk with his partner and children, travelling or on residencies. This gathering of visual material becomes a kind of sketchbook. The focus is the depiction of figures in the landscape. This compositional starting point becomes the physical structure that roots the works in reality and pulls the narrative of his paintings together. What makes Kotbra’s work feel less illustrative or documentary, however, is the insertion of strange, stylized characters in the ether around his protagonists. Weird forms hover like ghosts, demons or angels in the sky. The invisible made present. The psychological given form. They seem to interact with each other or the scenes beneath them, wrestling in the sky.

These linear characters are originally sourced from the sketchbooks of Tadeáš’ father, the artist Marius Kotrba. Towards the end of his life, Marius filled sketchbooks with small scenes of demons and angels. The composition and content of Renaissance paintings is evident here. The deposition of Christ. The grand stories of good against evil. These source drawings reflect the thoughts of a man later in life. Tadeáš’ has been frustrated with the time focusing on managing his father’s estate, in the wake of his passing. Some of that anger and emotion impacted the decision to incorporate his father’s drawings into his paintings. Perhaps a Freudian subconscious impetus mixed with the need to keep the work alive through collaboration. Some of Tadeáš pieces take only segments of the reference material. Others include a whole drawing. The result is a conversation. Between two artists and two styles. Between the past and the present. Between father and son. 

An incredible amount of time goes into the creation of Tadeáš’ works. He created numerous tiny watercolor tests to establish the structure, composition and color palette of each work. He places masking tape on the canvas and then draws the composition on top. He then cut the figures in the masking tape and applies oil paint with a palette knife in its small gaps with intense pigments. The contemporary elements often have richer colors. Flatter cream paint is used for the hard acrylic segments. Under this all are swathes of atmospheric watery shades. Sea greens, peaches, burgundy.Kotrba’s background in printmaking comes through but layered over something more complex.

Often the unpainted canvas emerges. Natural muted brown iridescent with gelatine. It is motif that emerged after visiting Sri Lanka – influenced by the impression of color against dust. There is a religious element here too – ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Even in life, we are bones.

These paintings address the larger questions of being. The focus is often on a mother and two children, notably the little boy taking steps into life. There is an underlying question about masculinity here. A young boy, led by his mother, into the world. Notably one of the central paintings here depicts an older man, bent over leaning on a tree. Exhausted, pensive, perhaps distressed. The clear-cut ideal of a stronger older man – the patriarch – is fading.

Amongst the tranquillity of nature there is also that sense of dissonance. The climate crisis is an ongoing trope in Kotrba’s work. In the past he has addressed toxic spills and the rise of global fires in his work. Here, his children take their steps into an ideal natural world with pensive focus, demons are fighting above them. It is an apt metaphor for the now. At a deep uncertainty we can only concentrate on each small step. 

Francesca Gavin, curator

 

Tadeáš Kotrba comes from the Czech Republic. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, as well as Central St Martins in London. 

Since graduating, Tadeáš’s works have been exhibited at solo and group exhibitions and are in both private and institutional collections in the Czech Republic and abroad.

The enduring theme of his work revolves around the path that we take both as individuals and as a community, and the different obstacles we must overcome in that process. His paintings most commonly depict figures in a landscape encountering these man-made or naturally occurring obstacles. The landscapes are often inspired by his travels abroad, and more and more by day-to-day life in his homeland.

He currently incorporates sketches by his father, the late sculptor and painter Marius Kotrba, into his works. Drawings that he made in the last year of his life often feature legions of demons and angels, chaos but also resolution. Tadeáš uses parts of these sketches, as well as their entire compositions as a basis for his paintings. He seeks not only to maintain an ongoing dialogue with his father, but also to develop new narratives in which he comments on larger sociopolitical issues and the smaller narratives which are affected by them.

 

Francesca Gavin has a multi-faceted career working as an editor, writer, curator and consultant. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of EPOCH and contributing art editor at Twin. She was the co-curator of Manifesta11 and has created numerous exhibitions at institutions and galleries including Somerset House, Palais de Tokyo and Fundação de Serralves, and is the former director of Vienna Contemporary. She is also the author of twelve books on art and visual culture including 'The Art of Mushrooms' and 'Watch This Space', and her latest book of collected interviews, 'Final Copy' published by At Last Books. Her monthly radio show 'Rough Version' on NTS Radio nts.live. www.francescagavin.com @roughversion

 

opening hours: from Wednesday to Saturday 17:00 - 21:00 and by appointment

address: entrance at Große Pfarrgasse 7, 1020 Vienna – Das KRAUS