Milan Klic
acts of insurgency
Mine is a story of an immigrant, of cultural fusion, ongoing, never complete.
I was born and educated in former Czechoslovakia, today’s Czech Republic. At that time the country was a part of the communist block and all aspects of culture, visual arts in particular, were subject to political dogma and tough censorship. My natural inclination towards sculpture seemed unrealistic in such environment, desires had to be put aside, postponed, silenced and reduced to dreams. I chose Natural Sciences (math, computer science) as a practical survivor’s way. I graduated in 1974 from Palacky University, Olomouc with MS and began my career as computer programmer.
But, dreams are weaving their fabric in their realm, spontaneously, beyond rational and practical considerations. As a way of spiritual survival, I was seeking expression in visual arts, first drawing and terra-cotta sculptures, then wood-carved, figurative ones. Most of the early figures are now in various private collections in Europe, others here in US, reminders of a period of still evolving style. Several exhibitions in the old country were recognized and appreciated mostly by people tied to the subculture by similar inner gravity. As happens with totalitarian regimes, oppression spawns underground subculture where individuals live and create in seclusion, hiding from the society rather than seeking meaningful communication with others, except those who are in similar predicament – “internal emigrants�.
The conditions in former communist regime eventually led to emigration in 1985. Exposure to highly technological, concept-driven civilization manifested itself in transformed perception, changed themes, materials used, aesthetic values. After the “Velvet revolution” in Czechoslovakia, when we all sighed with some relief, my sculptural expression was of rather intimate, lyrical nature. I gained a lot when I studied sculpture at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA in 1989-1992. Relatively peaceful 1990’s produced array of spatial metaphors, still readable in language of classical abstract modernism, bearing the seal of European heritage. But things are not going “velvet” in contemporary world, recent years profoundly changed our ways of thinking about the world,
“In the forms and titles of his sculptures, Klic comments on contemporary social ills such as misuse of political power and war and its consequences. Without being dogmatic, Klic encourages us to think about the absurdity of life and man’s inhumanity to man through his haunting and frail sculptures.”
Rachel Rosenfield Lafo, Direcctor of Curatorial Affairs, DeCordova Museum
I feel it as my inner choice to respond to this traumatized social and cultural milieu.
Nobody, much less artist, can be immune from anxieties, indifferent to turmoil and traumas into which the current civilization is plunged. World saturated with explosives, minds brainwashed by doctrines, motives driven by base instincts, monstrous media deceptions, casualties mounting, mental and physical. Emotional divides, virtual voids between substances, fragments of faith are themes of my sculpture, having been explored in drawings before taking shape as spatial metaphors.
What is actually spanning the space here and the space beyond?
Porque si la rueda olvida su fĂłrmula, ya puede cantar desnuda con las manadas de caballos; Fderico Garcia Lorca
Because if the wheel forgets its formula, it will sing nude with herds of horses; �
The theme of wheel, vehicle, to me the most mysterious and intriguing of human contraptions, and spiritual entanglements associated with it, offer intrinsic metaphor of existence. Dreamlike constructs, primitive and frail in their execution and use of organic materials, they refer back to the origins of travel and to the dominance of automobiles in contemporary society. In their fragility they express the psychological toll we pay for living in a world which at every moment seems to be obsessed with relentless mobility. In composition they seem to many viewers like spatial drawings, reduced to bare essentials and bizarre in their non-functionality, as if time and motion were suspended from within their very essence.
don’t worry, spiders, I keep house casually.
LI S TE NI N G R e e v e s
This installation presents in metaphor the condition of endangered humanity. Landmines, the most vicious of weapons killing and mutilating the most innocent are strewn dense on the ground, made out of cotton, resin and copper, shaped like vessels with menacing content or vaguely like candles, as if whispering eulogies for their future victims. Translucency and flickering reflections of light enhance the visual perception of galvanized land. Among them towering bamboo structure, painstakingly navigating its way through the inner siege, complete entrapment in obsession with bleeding edge technology. The wings spread from above slightly sway and move with receptive diligence, granting attention to every each of the mines, listening to their poisoned intentions and grievances, sucking their ideological venom, rendering them temporarily harmless. The shape and composition of the “listener� performing his/ her compassionate assignment on behalf of all of us visually resemble weirdo conductor being reversely conducted by the mines and transmitting the silent cry of the chorus.
TO
LAND MI NES
Ga l l e r y,
NY
ECH O
I NTERPRETER
Re e ve s
Gal l e r y,
NY
�We will never, have done with the question, not because there is O P I U M R e e v e s
WA R S Ga l l e r y,
N Y
still too much question, but because, in this detour of profundity that is proper to it -a movement that turns us away from it and from ourselves --
the question places us in relation with what has no end� maurice blanchot
Traversing space having soul as the only limb, tracing some real or imaginary trajectories do they have destinations as they have departure points? They must have, since we are always moving, whereabouts known or presumed. D RY
P O I NT
D I A RY
O F
THE
DI S A P P E A R E D
H OWL
On the withered, waveless solitude, The dented mask was dancing. Half of the world was sand, the other half mercury and dormant sunlight. Fderico Garcia Lorca
ULTRA LIGHT GAMBLE
These ethereal compositions are emotional response to the heavy process of overlaying real, authentic world with virtual, mediated entities such that those became more valid and relevant than what the eye can really see and what mind used to be able to interpret in its own way. Constant battering by media mirages does not leave us a chance to pause and reflect on the ways of mental escapism.
the dragonfly can’t quite land on that blade of grass
Although these sculptures are in composition still in dialog with classical visual library, the use of the lightest aluminum alloys and the feeling of weightless vulnerability renders the experience of anxiety in conceptual metaphor. You might be surprised, they disappear at slower pace than those media induced mirages.
ÂżbuscaĂs azul limosna del cielo moribundo? Are you begging azure alms from this dying sky? Fderico Garcia Lorca
LETTER
GH ETTO
MI S S I NG
TI GHT R O P E
A SYL U M
# 3
P LA C E B O
A LTA R
Fleeting perceptions of constantly flowing nature are our destiny, leaving us with visual residue, spatial echoes.
Are we in tune with natural phenomena enough to survive unharmed? Are we part of them or are we distancing ourselves from them, not seeing our eyes? Is there some other, rather metaphorical dimension to them which we are not aware of yet?
At the rise of the moon bells fade out and impassable paths appear. Fderico Garcia Lorca
Posing heat-tempered steel against cotton fiber, menacing blades against organic shapes speaks of anxiety and emotional distress. Metal blades swaying in the wind, touching, wounding, are both threats and bearers of meaning encrypted in the composition. Are they tattooing our memory permanently or do they recede in time? Would the metaphor be able to restore some dignity to this vulnerable creature calling itself human?
Todas sue単an extra単as aventuras de sombra. Frutos inaccesibles y vientos amaestrados. Ninguna se conoce. Ciegas y desconocidas, les duelen sus perfumes enclaustrados por siempre. Fderico Garcia Lorca
All of them dreaming strange adventures in the shade. Fruits hanging out of reach & domesticated winds. None of them know each other, blind & gone astray, their perfumes pining them but cloistered now forever.
paths from a voice to a listening You Paul Celan
I met her there at the crossroads. I don’t remember who spoke. Two breaths, two patterns of echo. This was both before and after, We shared one shadow. Paul Celan
Let me live
unmirrored.
Coolness – the sound of the bell as it leaves the bell