How to finish the year in apotheosis?… by visiting the new exhibition of Tomáš Jetela : “X – Hyde Star Ancient Rhymes” at the Galerie Jedna in Prague, until December 30… bringing warmth and light into the coldest and shortest days of the year!
Behind the enigmatic title of the exhibition, there is a world of possibilities and alternative realities… adventures. I chose to embarque into a galactic vessel in the direction of a “Jekyll and Hyde” star morphing and… on the way… “ancient rhymes” pass by… like the poetic spells of history… a contemporary Baroque… a meta-Renaissance.
Hyde and seek… as you enter and circulate around the gallery to explore the new and unprecedented existential theater… It’s like the heavy red velvet curtain has been raised by the artist to unveil new performances and monumental representations… new truths and paradoxes… by candle-light.
Take a seat… It’s a banquet, a time travel, were the artist invites you to eat at his table with the masters of the past for guests… sharing a last meal with the ghosts of Snyders, Bosch, Raphaël, Caravaggio, da Vinci, Arcimboldo, Bacon or Dalí… and many others who came to eat and behold. It’s a tribute and revelation… rupture and continuity… a bridge between the past and the future… No further comparison needed, no nostalgia or passeism… from now on the legacy has a name : Jetelism!
Like the former kermès and cochineal, the artist summons the red color… at the very end of the visible light spectrum… dionysiac, vibrant and luxurious. Fabric, lobster, raw meat, apple, pomegranate, flesh, blood and cherries… it’s a sacred theater of sin and passion. It’s The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Canvas… a spectacle where the viewer is facing an exquisite abyss of light and delight… until he feels it in his own heart like an echo of the depicted world… Eloquence!
The dreamlike landscape takes more place than usual in the composition, as a continuation and resonance of the figure. The landscape has something decorative like a theater set but also figurative as it embodies a part of her psychology and story. The unity of time, place and action is accomplished into the intimate relation of the protagonist and background… as an invitation to enter the painting and dive into the perspective… into the depth of the narration and introspection. Losing sight of reality enables the viewer to look closer into the essence of being.
Glorious and rotten existence… some kind of “self-cannibalism”… the figure becomes her own still-life, defiguration or dislocation, as the face and body merge into abstraction and fruit composition… the triumph of seasons, life cycle and true human nature. With the lobster, the art of Tomáš Jetela becomes as much the symbol of a resurrection and a perpetual mutation of the personality but also of his own practice… new shell and yearly regeneration process.
Knife, cracks in the head as a walnut revealing its “brain” or a wide open pomegranate, there is a conjunction of violence and vulnerability… a contortion of the mind between hell and paradise… while the snake neighbors the forbidden fruit. Bones, preys, bubbles, flowers, cheese, skulls, raven and melting candles… everything is a vanitas… into the ephemeral and eternal forms. The double nature is personal… the inner world of the figure as a pantry… a doppelgänger made of twin or inhabited faces… but also of allegories. Mushrooms levitate around like a super-ingredient and witchcraft… delicious, hallucinogenic and poisonous. They belong to a separate realm… a higher vanitas as they prosper at the expense of living and dead organisms… the ultimate hyphen between life and death.
The light is supernatural and natural as the candlelight often comes to lick the face of the figure like antical statues or baroque palaces… gods and muses. In the profusion of fragments, the anime girls, explicit poses, have become the new cherubs and grotesque. They even cohabit as a vaporous redefinition of love symbolic… the allegoric and erotic as an angelic and dazzling ascension above mankind.
It’s a carnage, a feast and a firework… life sparkling through the night of December… and it is just the beginning…
More info :
https://www.instagram.com/tomasjetela/
ABSTRACT MIMESIS 