snow (sneh)

Selection of works by Martin Kochan for the exhibition SNEH at the gallery amt_project was finished already in winter. Despite this and despite the title of the exhibition, it does not intend to be an a priori reaction to the topic of snow, or winter as a season, as it may look like at first glance. A connection with seasons is rather secondary and accidental. Even though snow is a common denominator of the major part of the exhibited pictures, what they actually depict are various civil, poetically engaged subjects, transformed to a picture, using elements of reduction and abbreviation. This collection is a compression of abstracts coming from everyday reality, where reaction on public space vibrates.

In the exhibited works, several content/referential levels can be observed; it is logical that at first, parallels to winter as a season emerge. Every season represents a cultivating medium for a certain updating of public space. Kochan is interested in constant update of living space in itself, he tries to capture it in a due manner. Further, there is a natural tradition of sculpturing emerging (which is transposed to photography and through photography, interpreted for the viewer). What makes the tradition of sculpture natural is author’s formal education as a sculptor. Presentation in the form of photography is a result of the fact that he does not need to think about the sculpture in traditional intensions and can project it to any kind of medium. A fast and unambiguous medium of digital photography enables him to take his stand in a more radical way by interventions to „non-art“.

The exhibited artworks did not arise a priori „on the basis“ of snow, however, snow is one of their „recognition signs“, it occurs in almost every picture and its theme can be recognized in the whole presented collection. The snow in the exhibited pictures in some cases evokes even something very anti-polar than to what it normally does: a photography with a person with bobsledge in a snowy-bound field reminds of a Tutankhamun in a sandy desert (Tutanchamón, year). The form of presentation also reminds of a documental style of capturing, when the traveller – explorer in the middle of a plain in Kenya takes a picture of a black man with an arrow in his hand. The output is indeed a reaction on living statues by Erwin Wurm in Kochan’s rendering, transposed though Egyptian facts and captured in their local environment. Other element in this collection, which is for Kochan a provocative one, is a mask/ masking, what also finds its place in his creation. The exhibited works reflect national folklore, urban primitivism and transformation of meaning that follow.

One of the layers of author’s interest, that the exhibition highlights, are drawings/ paintings, again, „found“ in reality, taken out of it and further suaved by the author’s gesture, or left in the original form. Kochan does not have to suave the drawings and paintings, when it was done by someone else before him; he „just“ finds them and records them („non-manipulated drawings“ that arose by tires of arriving and leaving cars and footprints of passers-by on a snow-covered parking lot, scratching with a sharp object on a color varnish of a vending machine, or a snow drawing on a fasade of a panel house; or also „manipulated“ ones – just like a drawing that arose by removing a particular snow by the author). In Kochan’s opinion, a drawing can „define“ things, but he also projects a sorf of poetical thinking into it:

the surface of a snow-covered parking lot is clean at first, with the evening lights the snow acquires a slightly lemon-colored tint, the atmosphere is almost zen-like. With a sign reading Pokladňa (Cash desk), a text level is getting into the picture, along with a certain poetry. A picture requires this expression along with the emotional connections attached to it. Last but not least, we should mention one more level of Kochan’s „drawing“, present at the exhibition: on the way in the car, with his finger he is drawing a motive of dots and diamonds on the window, without any evident rational connection. The motive refers to techniques of decoration found in primitive tribes in Africa.

A considerable layer of Kochan’s creativity are engaged, stage-managed, or, to put it in a different way – acoustically motivated outputs. A considerable layer of Kochan’s creativity is engaged, stage-managed, or put it in a different way – acoustically motivated outputs. At the exhibition, these outputs are represented by the photography of Martin Kochan with Cyril Blažo, where both authors are standing on pedestals they found accidentally in the city streets, and standing several meters apart from each other. Standing on them, they appear as if one of them was a lot bigger and the other was a lot smaller (the viewer’s feeling is that they are both standing on one level, because he can not see the spatial distance between the pedestals). In a spontaneous way, a certain unaware, but considerable hierarchization is arising, refering to various connotations, in context of urban space and various pedestals, very often present in the city, and designated for presentation of often suspicious objects.

Kochan is fascinated by an uncountable number of things, he absorbs pictures and information he then connects in a post-modern way and gives them away by means of his work. He is inspired by his studies of post-modernism, by sociological studies of Václav Bělohradský, and enriched by texts written by Ján Mančuška. He has been discussing his achievements in the field of visual arts with Michal Moravčík for a long time, and in a creative tandem cooperating with Cyril Blažo (both authors perform on an equal basis in their collaboration – actually, they are „using each other“ as a medium and mutually in the form of photography they capture their own ideas – taking pictures of each other). In their approach and participatory cooperation they often deliberately apply a lot of things, that are completely unrelated to each other. This method could seemingly evoke practices and creative principles of dadaism, but actually it is more about their attempt to „break – negate – ignore standard creative approaches, the standard language of artistic expressions, to that, according to Kochan, one can not be „devoted“ to too much; for him, this method is just a „dead-end street of various neo-, pseudo- and post-conceptual development trends“.
Despite this author’s statement, his deliberation and creation in the field of visual art related to it are conceptual, but this conceptualism can not be unambiguously defined in intentions of traditional definition; maybe it would be more suitable to use the term kochanism.

The exhibition Sneh may show a little different side of Kochan’s creation than what is already known to his viewers (engaged object/sculptural/situational creations). After all, even though he presents only 2D records of „found“ and captured actions and occurences, some of them could be perceived as engaged and, in some cases, also poetic.

text by Lucia Gavulová