Dr. Hirsch about the Models of the World exhibition

Models of work

Introductory speech by Dr. Hirsch at the Modely Světa [Models of the World] exhibition at the Školská Gallery on 31.03.2008

The body and the soul as two antagonistic substances inevitably require a general, sufficiently cohesive principle for their paradoxical symbiosis. Let’s say, not only for the sake of this evening, this principle could be work in all its complex, semantic breadth. In my view, work is not divided at all into obligato physical and mental parts, but is always an all-pervasive process, that is simply subject to various interpretations and retrospective analyses, which inevitably leads to many mistakes and delusional interpretations of its essence. I mean, above all, the unwillingness to recognize the latent presence of essential work in certain activities commonly understood as separate and distinct, but from which, to my mind, this penetrability amounts, on the contrary, to marginal and transient activity, which is even in some cases indistinguishable. Of course, I am talking about the golden triangle of art–work–gadgetry. If you accept this—albeit I warn you dogmatic—key, you will clear the way to a more entertaining but also more honest observation of artistic manifestations in the world around us. With what immense freedom we can thus as observers proceed to the intergenerational work of Grandson and Grandfather Přibyl. The thin line of work intersects space-time, transforms the structural functions of what is displayed and fundamentally changes its own creative motives and points of departure, and yet it remains undisturbed by the basics—sovereign artistic morphology. Looking at the basal form of Anthony Přibyl’s objects, we see a demonstration of a distinct artistic and intellectual order, and encounter a breathtaking primacy and obvious finality at once, and the work is accentuated at the level of pathways, or conscious, free indications of direction, from one point to another. The way in which these "artifacts in time" have captured their heirs, heightens their aforementioned, implied dimensions. The chosen non-interpretive interpretation deliberately does not create a new context unless, of course, we consider it to be a non-context, gray area, but objects, on the contrary, liberate it and give it expression. Was art in the beginning, then, or does it stand at the end? Is this principled gadgetry as work for work´s sake? Is it the unintended consequence of general labour as work for the body, or is it so-called true art as a work for the spirit? Or is the spirit of art carried away by the medium of labour through time and matter, and thus constitutes artwork, as I myself perceive? In any case, try to come to a conclusion of your own.

March 2008, Warnemünde