Jiří Černický

Jiří Černický
Jiří Černický
	Jiří Černický (2007)
Born	1 August 1966; Ústí nad Labem, Czech republic
Nationality	Czech
Education	Academy of Fine Arts in Prague Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in Prague Faculty of Art and Designu, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem
Occupation(s)	Visual Artist, Painter, Sculptor
Style	Intermedia
Website	cernicky.com

Jiří Černický (born 1 August 1966, Ústí nad Labem, Czechoslovakia) is a Czech visual artist who is known as an author of experimental intermedia projects. His work often moves between various media and it is not entirely clear which medium prevails – whether video art, visual poetry or photography. His work is often characterized by a social and political commitment associated with the violating of social taboos.

Jiří Černický is a winner of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award, the Soros Award and the 48th October Salon Award (in Belgrade, Serbia). He was a finalist for the Alice Francis Award.

Work and Life

In 1998, Černický won the prestigious Jindřich Chalupecký Award. For a long time his presence on the art scene has been very radical and conspicuous. The common basis of his often very disparate projects can be most aptly described as fictional scenarios. Černický subsequently concentrates these in various media, which he often combines within complex exhibition constellations. He confidently alternates between easel painting and objects, video and photography. He uses strategies based on action art as well as new media technologies. He does not avoid strong emotions, social criticism and prediction of the future. Just as he unsettles the sharp dividing line between reality and fiction, he undermines and liberates unbearable pathos through ironic humor. Černický’s equilibristic skill at balancing all these components has protected his projects from the risk of an empty morality, a too obvious wit or a convoluted boredom.

Over the last decade, the artistic and political avant-garde of the early 20th century have become one of the most frequent topics of contemporary art. One of the main reasons for this is often nostalgia for the radical social ethos that the protagonists of the avant-garde programmatically claimed. In a simplified explication, art and practice in life were to merge into one and become the cornerstone for the building of a new society. This is in stark contrast with the current reality, when art has to define and defend its position primarily through itself. Not only does contemporary art’s primary lack of utilitarianism provide a pretext for the larger society to question its purpose, it also creates a lot of tension within the artistic community itself. The archeological uncovering of the ruins of avant-garde movements can either be downplayed as a tentative flirtation with the radical rhetoric of the beginnings of modern art, or taken seriously as a sincere search for a possible way out of the loop of current artistic practice and function.

Jiří Černický’s art is always astonishing and leaves one standing in awe. It consistently displays an experimental potency: The artist discovers something new all the time, and at a time when we no longer dare to require something new in this field! In a society that treated art better, Černický would be pampered as an exclusive celebrity.

Černický, who first studied art in Ústí nad Labem, moving to the Prague schools later, came to the attention of the public through very unusual projects. In 1993 he collected tears from people in the street, which he then personally took to an Ethiopian monastery. At the time, the project sounded like a mystification, but soon afterward he received the prestigious Jindřich Chalupecký Award.

Černický always deals with his themes in discrete units, whether a series of paintings, installations, objects, photos or videos. Few artists are capable of moving so masterfully between so many media without getting lost in empty gestures of showing off. Unforgettable examples of Černický’s art include tools for taking drugs made of cut glass, a tattooed sausage, a glass model of a nuclear explosion, a striped series of paintings, an ornamental series on terrorism, monochrome images with a silicon structure, a monument in the form of an information board at a railway station with philosophical texts, videos about the movement of the speed of light, the “Gagarin Thing”... and above all, a kind of icon of the 21st century: a white motorcycle helmet as a paraphrase of Munch’s dramatic painting The Scream.

Another impressive aspect of Černický’s work is its thematic relevance. While others pursue the famous Czech cynicism, trivialisation and circumvention of the truth (which is actually an implausible and ridiculous notion), Černický deals with major themes and calls them directly by their names. Behind each of his works, there is an actual story with a moral imperative present: The stories are like a hyperbola seasoned with light irony, like documents full of the present.

The exhibited works come from private collections, therefore consist mainly of paintings, with an emphasis on their visual quality and consistency. The meaning of each artistic work is revealed only in collections that are accessible to the public.

Education

1987–1990 - Faculty of Education, Ústí nad Labem
1993–1997 - Academy of Fine Arts, Prague
1990–1993 - Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, Prague
2015 - Associate Professor appointment at Faculty of Art and Design, Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem

Public Collections

National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
Prague City Gallery, Czech Republic
Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, USA
Museum for Applied Art / Contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria
Musee d’Art Moderne, Saint Etienne, France

Private Collections

Richard Adam, Prague
Pavel Kneppo, Prague
Thomas Day Newbold, Prague, Washington, USA
Bert-Jan van Egteren, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Santiago Eder, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Kenneth L. Freed, Boston, USA
Habib Kheradyar, Los Angeles, USA
Jerry Speyer, New York, USA

Exhibitions

Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic, "Jiří Černický: Wild Dreams" (2016).^[1]

Residencies

Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany
Tent Gallery and MAMA Gallery, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Headlands, San Francisco, USA
Vivid Gallery, Birmingham, UK
Spaces Gallery, Cleveland, USA
Futura Gallery, Třebešice Castle, Czech Republic

Awards

2007 - 48th October Salon Award, Beograd, Serbia
1998 - The Jindřich Chalupecký Award, Prague
1996 - The Soros Award, Prague
2012 - Finalist of the Alice Francis Award

Selected works

Binds 2006, unspecified dimension, Combined technique
The Gop, 2006, 250x100x50 cm, Combined technique
First Schisophrenia produced in series, 1998, 23x23x23 cm, compozite, acryl, fabric
Curtain, 2014, 400x400 cm, fabric, reflective glass
Minimax 2, 2012, 204x147x47 cm, combined technique
Photoflash (paparazzi sculpture) – 1998, 500x200x120 cm, polyuretan, silicon, glass, precesual tools, water, cleaners, light