Vladimír Véla
As far back as the 1930s, Josef Čapek recognised—though he was certainly not the first—that one of the essential qualities of any true work of art lies in a certain “non-descriptiveness” in relation to material reality. He had in mind the fact that a work of art should not merely describe reality, nor act as a servile translation of sensory perception into words, tones or colours. A genuine work of art should make everything we live through, think about and encounter—everything that resonates within us and stirs our inner life—fully present and alive. Art in Čapek’s words, should depict; it should give our imaginings a body, materialising them within their dimension of being, even when that dimension does not correspond entirely to the conventions through which we usually view the world.
Although Zdeněk Trs and Vladimír Véla have each developed a distinctly individual painterly style, a number of things unite them. Both are graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and both studied, among other places, at the Studio of Classical Painting Techniques under Zdeněk Beran. Today they are conventionally classified as abstract painters, yet in both cases this label significantly distorts our view of their work. The point of departure—and of return—for both artists is the lived world, though in their case this extends far beyond the boundaries of the world of objects. What most deeply connects Véla and Trs as artists is their shared conviction of the absolute autonomy of painting, of its independence from any form of explanatory commentary. For them, painting is an attempt to synthesise a disintegrating world through imagination—a mode of knowing intrinsic to all human beings.
The aim of the exhibition Embodied Visions is not to graft together, by means of a sophisticated or verbose curatorial concept, two independently thinking and creating artists. The works of Zdeněk Trs and Vladimír Véla, placed side by side, manifest something much more universal: a shared personal and painterly sensibility, a lifelong friendship, and ultimately, a common fascination with the Mystery that alone makes both life and art meaningful.
