Ladislav Václav Kouba, Luboš Rothbauer a Jan Žalio

The ninth exhibition of Studio Hrdinů, which we leave without a name, loosely responds to the production of Wasteland directed by Miroslav Bambušek. Wasteland is based on a libretto, a poetic composition, which was created by fusion of three collections by the poet, songwriter and artist Pavel Zajíček (Ripped Film, Grey Dream and Book of the Sea). The production comprises three dramatic components: live music (DG 307), film screenings and actors’ action. This creates a specific form on the borderline between film, concert, and theatre.

Approaching the three authors, Ladislav Václav Kouba, Luboš Rothbauer and Jan Žalio, was an intuitive impulse resulting from the memory of energy of their personalities and their work at the School of Applied Arts of St Agnes in Český Krumlov. Here we met and occasionally heard from each other. Their subsequent meetings always seemed to me like a ceaseless controversy over the experience of daily reality ‘without words’, a mixture of images, sounds and more or less coordinated movement. Now each of us has gone a step farther, even if the presented images may seem to refer to something in the remote past, despite their originality.

P.Z.: ‘New images are created in cities, in urban landscapes of suns and moons. They are created in reinforced concrete and illuminations.’

Paintings, projections, photo and drawings create a mosaic of images, sounds, and the spectator’s occasional intervention. Reflections of trees, rivers and faces, human relations and doodles where ‘you won’t avoid a story’, this is the title of Jan Žalio’s large-format animation on the mezzanine, which may evoke the texture of film stock. Walking through a forest, views of the sea, stratification and breaking of projection screen, illuminated photograph of a walking woman, everything leads us slowly to the depths of our minds. We stand in front of a recumbent horse of Ladislav Václav Kouba, which may be resting following ceaseless attempts to tame it. The horse is crammed into a format, isolated in the landscape, and the whole scene is surrealist. It is a supernatural being of sorts. Its look is directed at his heart of hearts, at its inner landscapes. The little drawings of Luboš Rothbauer placed in the small hall also refer to an inner world. Inside them we recall faces that we touched and by means of repeated sketching memories break down in abstractions. The assumed crystal from his photo series gives us the hope that it is still important to experience the dark without which we would not know light.

P.Z.: I sought you in ash!
I sought you in dust!
I sought you in desert sand!
Your spicy fragrances I sought there!
I looked at the Sun to see whether you had not flown there by chance!
No drops from wax wings shone in the sky!
I wanted to speak with you but you became smaller to echoes!
So did I!