Zbyněk Sedlecký: Propman

Publication for exhibition of one of the key authors of the generation born in the 70s.

Bilingual publication for the solo exhibition of the painter Zbyňek Sedlecký, for whom the relationship between the observer and the environment is fundamental and authoritative. He found himself in situations whose switch is a personal experience linked to the starting point of a photographic record.

While Sedlecký's older works relied more on static photographic models and structurally transposed the technical surface of the medium into a kind of distant, "documentary" nature of the resulting painting, the contemporary paintings draw objects and figures together, into the intimate proximity of the viewer, into immediate distance, within reach , where they "breathe" with their presence. In Zbyňek Sedlecký's latest paintings, a new way of personalizing what is seen and depicted occurs. The paintings are more compact and at the same time apply a sense of the internal movement of forms in their declared contrasts and complementarities (focusing of detail x blurring of the background, solid x soft, lively x factual, etc.). The title of the exhibition Propman is both true and misleading in itself. It situates the author in the ambiguous role of someone who, within the given conditions, acts directly, for himself, or who constructs confusing artificial situations. In Zbyňek Sedlecký's painting, it is not a manifestation of "personal mythology", which would construct something from the point of view of the author's transcendent subject, but an attempt, through a painting excursion into specific genres, to revive the relationship to the immediate world as something natural in principle, which, however, must be rediscovered, revealed and accepted. The Propman exhibition also contributes to this, working completely non-theatrically with a half-open and half-drawn curtain. Just pulling this metaphorical tool (the curtain) into the reading of the figuration is an overstepping of the powers of the prop maker, who no longer only fulfills the approved script, but operates in a wider field of what is in front of and behind the curtain as such. Here, Sedlecký touches on the fateful interface that distinguishes banality from seriousness, as well as authentic experience from any vanity, manipulation and purposeful imitation. motifs and themes. What I'm probably looking for most (as an author and a viewer) in art and painting is a certain authenticity, believability."

Curator: Petr Vaňous
Texts: Petr Vaňous
Graphic design: Jana Vahalíková
Book production: Blanka Čermáková, Veronika Čechmánková
Photography: Ján Rečo, Marcel Rozhoň, Ota Palán, Ivan Pinkava
Translation: Phil Jones
Text proofs: Tereza Hubáčková
Photo editing: Michal Janata (Studio Marvil)
Number of copies: 350
Published by Spolek Trafačka as its 36th publication
2022
ISBN 978-80-908062-8-3