Articles - Josef Moucha
The Prague artist Ivan Pinkava has made his mark during the last fifteen years by exhibiting his work at every opportunity. Ten years ago, by the time he was thirty, he had published his first monograph. Even back then, models usually helped the artist to bring about an informal effect.
The most important change from the earlier period of Pinkava’s work is evident in his further suppression of the link between the resulting photograph and the requirements of portrait photography. In portrait photography the message that determines the meaning consists in the more or less descriptive representation of a concrete being. Pinkava’s development has also been accompanied by a continuous, radical reduction in the number of props used. Stripping the figures of their material attributes seems to have compelled Pinkava to add the still life to his work.
Pinkava does not experiment. His creed as an artist is spirituality, not experimentation. He has developed a particular liking for the aesthetics of Mannerism and the Baroque. Just as he is clearly in harmony with Christian inspiration, Pinkava, with the conception and titles of some of his photographs, also makes reference to things even further back in time. But the photographs are not furnished with literary codes, though their titles help us to recall the pictures in our subconscious. For the viewer, the photographs provide an opportunity to reflect upon the conflict between the hidden attraction of individual distinctions and the basis of everything we all have in common. The associations that are evoked aim towards Antiquity, towards the Classical. The ancient character of the archetypes becomes part of the present in the way the pictures have been made, but without relinquishing evocations even of primitivism.
Ivan Pinkava is one of the fortunate artists. His works immediately become classics. One need not wait till they age, till time has given them a patina. The hallmark of timelessness is provided straight away by the artist himself. But one also recognizes the expression of a clearly contemporary authorship. The representation of archetypes, which are deposited in the foundations of the subconscious of civilization, is based on the photographic technique. The artist, however, is not calling for antiquarianism; instead, he works in the spirit of contemporary standards. The picture is thus linked with the urgency of the present. This is also because the form of the subject- matter remains palpably alive: the photo negative has literally absorbed the appearance of the model.
The ambiguous mood of the photos is supported by the lighting and the perfectionism with which all the aesthetic and tonal values are turned into relatively large prints. This aesthetically refined path also induces us to collaborate in the profound search for the existential meaning of Pinkava’s pictures, and goads us to introspection. The seriousness with which the photographs are made wrenches us out of the ordinary way of looking at things and forces us to stop and really look. The artist demonstrates the basic, ineradicable features of the origin of humankind; not only the outer features, but also, and indeed primarily, the inner ones. He is concerned with a mysterious primal essence – in other words, not only with spiritual sources, but also with inclinations towards the darker side. Evidently, to be able to work in this way Pinkava must have the talents of an occultist medium. Without them he would not have managed to make the beings in the photographs be so obviously physically relaxed, let alone achieve the depiction of that undoubtedly present, though intangible, aura of their conscious participation, which carries with it the hope of a positive result.
The way Ivan Pinkava is able to bring his models’ states of mind into play with his own ideas is what I call mastery.
Josef Moucha, Prague 2001
Translation Derek Paton