Yes, the world is what it is, and so be it attested to by letters on paper.
Jan Šerých was born, and therefore he resides therein, the office corridor leads forth, lined to the left and right by two rows of closed doors, the carpet is grey, biting at the bare feet, the footsteps are initially precarious.
Jan Šerých has chosen the fickle vocation of an artist.
Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic which is located at the centre of a continent called Affluence.
Its population, ever so keen on an alcoholic beverage named beer, crouch timidly, huddled together, preferring
not to peek out.
Prague has a gallery of its own which is called the City Gallery Prague, or CGP.
CGP is an institution in its own right, with a stubborn head set firmly upon its shoulders.
Not only does CGP suppose to know, it actually knows what the artist really needs.
On his distressful journey towards a room brimming with ideas and decorative objects, the artist will certainly appreciate the services of a guide – let´s tentatively call him/her a curator.
CGP has instructed Jan Šerých: „Artist, pick your guide.“
Three years ago, this writer spent several weeks on the rear seat of a car riding round Great Britain.
Three years ago, Jan Šerých spent several weeks on the front seat of a car riding round Great Britain.
That may also be why Jan Šerých has made this particular pick.
As, however, Jan Šerých has no real need of a guide, and as the institution´s beliefs notwithstanding, he is
a thoroughly rational individual, this writer shall do no more than proves to be indispensable for him to receive
the remuneration promised.
Crisis is lurking right behind the door, and five thousand crowns may come in handy to a human being in need.
At the same time, Jan Šerých called upon this writer to try and step out of his part as a curator, and set out on a journey in his company instead.
Therefore, he does join him on the journey, or perhaps follows behind him, sharing his direction, being a mere piece of mental luggage.
That, hopefully, is all there is to say on the status of luggage.
The spectator, visitor, reader, is a person who has come to the exhibition.
Indeed, to him/her the above-listed information is entirely useless.
His/her life in this world flows evenly into a distance.
His/her consciousness remains unchanged.
Regardless of the meaning of art in relation to reading eyes and evaluating mind, let´s start now.
Yes.
The whole world is of a piece.
The matter of the world consists of so many and so minuscule parts that my mind fails me, preferring to abuse the multitude by an attributed unity.
Anything outside of one particular human body is different.
Different may mean death; a fight takes place between two; a nutcracker cracks a nut.
The doom lurks in the wholeness of universal space, in each and every moment of the present time.
Geometry strives to structure the wholeness of the different.
It constructs hierarchies, separates a more terrifying death from one that is more merciful, sows the gardens of repose, can grant you the delights of both power and wisdom.
It can separate chaos from order, the uniform from the diverse.
Through time, it pours indivisible liquid matter from one vessel into another.
Yes, my own inadequacy obliges me to hoist ladders of arbitrary metaphors.
The forest of words keeps growing, incomprehensibly, around the meaning of expression: to pass forth jugs, erect walls, build roads, work, tidy up, organize, observe hygienic stereotypes, eat, defecate, reproduce.
Each option is just a torn off handle, a turning-on of Google, a hundred-zero digit, a random word,
a knot in the causal chain.
A march onward, a present impossibility of inertia.
Indeed, awareness mirrors the situation of the self until nightfall, until pain and weariness make the body sleep, die.
This is not a journey, but an attempt to employ analogy in tracing down the axis of time.
The results of each individual act of comparison define the mighty human river.
And what about the subject?
Isn´t it the same, 10 ways of surviving on a desert island, 15 ways of dating Agáta Hanychová, 20 ways of installing contemporary art work at home…
Yes, the Cartesian Cage represents position, geometry, rationality…
It shines in darkness.
And yet, the night is dark all around, more obscure than coffee dregs, and in it lurks everything that tells the self: “No.”
I repeat myself, saying automatically: Fear.
The signifying collapses into sounds.
Behind it crouch the shrubs, leaves pile up under the trees, the night is rife with the smell of rotting apples and with the fresh taste of ozone.
People dwell behind the windows, social venues hum with the voice of consent.
Up in the sky emerged the first twinkles of stars.
Words lying on the desktop, shifted several times, have become lost to their meanings.
Darkness has become the same as that whereby the night, life, the world, the whole, the different, and indeed, even death, converge into oneness.
Between day and night, Jan Šerých has been seeking for unambiguous decisions.
The Yes Exhibition has stuck the lance into the body of the prey.
Through the milk of the fog is carried a faint moaning.
Crime is our common heritage.
The skull moves, supported by Atlas from below upwards, from above downwards, yes.
The victim´s sobs can be heard even through the mist of the cranium.
The quartering of flesh for continued survival, day, night, truth, lie.
Yes indeed, that´s how it is, I am, you are, they are, indeed, the ring is worn by the hand of consciousness.
* * *
No, it´s not true that I have done nothing at all.
But I have striven to do the least possible.
I´m not sure about the amount of prejudice prevailing about Jan Šerých´s work.
I might be able to quote one or two examples thereof.
Rationality, geometrical tendencies, concept, recycled, ready-made, typography, scheme, codes, riddles, boredom, repetitiveness, emptiness, variability, lost communication, stereotyped approaches, confusing results, politics of the inhumane, biology of otherness…
Words are scattered on paper like so many poppy seeds.
Somebody told me that in Germany schools were forbidden to serve poppyseed pastry to young students.
I repeat instances of prejudice so that they assume a meaning, I repeat them as I would a mantra projecting the attributes of membership of a guild.
The sum of research work labelled Jan Šerých offers no solution, so let´s refer it all to the wastepaper basket.
No, geometry brings nothing positive; why indeed, it splits up the indivisible essence of existence, holds the reins of power, commits crimes, and in the final analysis, is set against the wholeness of life.
This criminal kind of geometry has charted the outlines of institutions.
CGP, NG, AFA, CR: the corridors in which we march.
CGP represents censorship, selectiveness, history and a perspective for anything.
A well-oiled machine of mediocrity.
No, the pictures laid out in a sequence are not meant to depict any story.
Perhaps they are a loosely assembled chain of bits of information, a slideshow of emotions, a stammering statement.
Or maybe a wood screw, stripped so it looks like a spindle.
Which Jan Šerých tries to drive all the way into the support.
Some better tool than an ordinary spanner needs to be taken out of the drawer.
No, this is hopeless.
Let´s try it another way then.
I´ll try to imagine that Jan Šerých has pre-drilled a hole.
And the spectator holds both the spanner and the wood-screw.
And then it´s entirely up to his/her free will what they will do with the tools.
However, the instruction, “get involved”, addressed to the spectator, that is, to you, is a tedious automatism reminiscent of the old times.
Be one of us, release the shutter, the hole is pre-drilled into your head, the picture rotates in a spiral.
No, not even this has been a grammatically proper solution; the last try then: Jan Šerých is not drilling, rather, he points with his finger, however impolite that may be, outlining the space of communication as viewed through the sequence of windows conceived by him.
No voices can be heard here.
From the side of the communicating persons, clear glass frames the picture of privacy.
The dusky room of memory already projects an air of being lived in, with an Ikea table standing in the middle, wooden folding chairs arranged around, an armchair with worn upholstering pushed aside, into a corner.
The spectator has entered the room, lit a reading-lamp.
He/she has noticed that the room´s furnishings can be dated to the last four decades.
A stream of light has hit a wooden board which, fixed onto four perpendicular bars, contains the right angle with each of them.
Standing on the top of this form is an object within which evolves a tableau vivant: dashed horizontal lines pass continuously from right to left; after a while it becomes clear that certain sequences of the lines recur.
Noise alternates with harmonious tones; nonetheless, the volume keeps rising.
The ears of the spectator´s body start to experience a feeling of vexation.
The hands make a swift movement, lifting the head up, high above the body.
Memory tries to relate corresponding sounds to emerging images.
Flesh, blood, bones, sinews, liquids, are either white or black.
White fat worms leave in the sediment black traces of mental conclusions.
Among hints of ideas, there is no silence, nor is there sound.
The room has disappeared, without offering a chance of finding out its location, the walls have been pulled apart,
the unfurling time has died down.
An orphaned appropriation.
Not really in fact, it´s a case of Alzheimer´s singularity.
A, a, a, a; a; a! A! A!
In the average human lifetime, twelve super-novas explode in the sky.
Some of them collapse into black holes, others end up as white dwarfs.
Not much more than one-half of the Czech Republic´s population spend about eight hours each day in front of the tv screen.
Jan Šerých stopped the song in the middle, switching on to the following track.
Random choice has been turned on.
None of Jan Šerých´s exhibitions is a simple sum of its parts.
Crashing ruins of rational formations have buried the spectators under Ground Zero.
Severed limbs of consciousness, handwriting, potency, are lying denuded in mud and slime.
From a visit in 2008, Jan Šerých has brought back the memory of the New World.
Jan Šerých offers illusions of the possibility of saying: No.
Sea between the continents is rough, glaciers keep mum on their demise, white crests of surging waves erode the human world piece by piece.
No, this is not the world, it´s a vanishing idea.
It´s not me, blinded eyes will render no testimony to no one.
The “No” must be said still before the onset of amnesia.
The “No” tastes better than human flesh.
– Marek Meduna