Spirit, are you there ...? Monika Drápalová – fashion designer & František Matoušek – painter
foto: Salim Issa, S2photo.cz
foto: Salim Issa, S2photo.cz
foto: Salim Issa, S2photo.cz
Spirit, are you there ...? A report on the death of things I am fascinated by fabrics. Warp and weft: such a simple concept and so many possibilities. They may make different patterns, but they are always interwoven and fit together. Thus do they prepare a surface for me, into which I delve with my tailor’s scissors in order to create a space. A space intended for man. But what happens when the warp abandons the weft? The structure of the fabric falls apart, the surface loses its integrity, and a hole is created. We can throw it away or seize the opportunity to see the naked truth of the death of things; to delve deeper into realization and find a fragile beauty. When I first saw František’s pictures, the damaged material spoke to me. It told me more about his way of seeing than about the image on the surface. His technique goes deep, down to the essence. The pictures and faces that emerge from the fabric are like apparitions from another world. In my designs, I always try to reflect the state of things that I see around me. For me, this is a time of tearing apart and destruction that gives birth to a new fabric. I have spent a long time thinking about how to make clothing reflect the soul. And working with František has given me the chance to try… Monika Drápalová
M. D. After graduating from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design, Monika Drápalová founded the Modrá Design fashion studio in Prague. While still at the Academy, she won the Jeunes Créateurs de Mode award in Paris; several years later she opened a second studio in France. She regularly presents her collections at the Pret-a-Porter fashion fair in Pairs, and distributes her models to Japan, the United States, Lebanon, France, Belgium, England, Italy, and the Netherlands. From 2003 to 2005, she was the fashion director of Korloff Couture Paris. She also collaborates with the Printemps and Galeries Lafayette shopping centers. In 2010, she represented the Czech Republic at the Shanghai World Expo. Drápalová is a recipient of the 2009 Czech Grand Design Award.
I have been working exclusively with denim since 1996, using my own technique in which I pull out the white fibers from the warp. This results in thin, dark-blue lines that can be further molded into a portrait, landscape, or dark surface. I then combine this with painting. The fact that I work with denim and not another kind of fabric is important for me. While growing up in the 1980s, denim was a symbol of freedom and a certain defiance towards the communist regime of the time. Like many things that I liked, such as long hair and rock music, the regime couldn’t stand worn jeans. Alongside other characteristics such as a certain illusoriness, vicissitude, and excitement, denim has retained this sense of freedom to this day. I had previously used it only to make paintings, but had always dreamt of applying it in fashion as well – I just didn’t know how to go about it. Then Monika asked me to collaborate with her, and in so doing gave my work another reason for existence – reincarnated within her beautiful fashion designs. This collaborative effort strikes me as a highly interesting and liberating game with previously unexpressed rules and a mysterious outcome. An unexpected fusion of two souls… SPIRIT, ARE YOU THERE? František Matoušek
F. M. Painter František Matoušek is a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. In the catalogue to the exhibition Painters ’03 (Galerie Klatovy/Klenová, 2004), Martin Dostál wrote: “If the creation of contemporary visual art requires a conviction of its meaningfulness, a yearning for beauty, obstinacy while producing the work, and original inventiveness, then František Matoušek fulfils all these requirements. For several years now, he has been surprising us with his torn denim technique, in which he pulls out fibers in order to illusionistically ‘paint’ portraits, flowers or personally visited and ‘visibly’ experienced landscapes – all of which he then touches up with paint to one degree or another (or sometimes not at all). His inspiration comes from immediate reality (though sometimes from the media), which he perceives in its full subtlety – the intimately felt landscape of Boskovice, the urban corners of Prague and New York, or portraits of his own family. We should note that Matoušek still infectiously believes that pictures possess an inexhaustible ability to communicate emotions.”
foto: Elle, 2012
JEANS – a new tale The words jeans (from the French pronunciation for Genoa – “Gênes”) and denim (from the French “de Nîmes” – “from Nîmes”) today recall the Euro-American history of one fabric, of particular styles of clothing, their multiple layers of symbolism, and the still-vibrant social and cultural differentiation of people and groups. The first competition for artists working with denim (Denim Art) was started in 1970 in New York. In today’s Czech Republic, we are seeing the emergence of two artists who are writing their tales in denim: painter František Matoušek and fashion designer Monika Drápalová. Matoušek uses denim for his paintings of faces, people and landscapes. Working with partially unstitched denim, he uses acrylic paints and the effects of varying densities of thread to create illusory and markedly reminiscential paintings. They may resemble old tapestries or the spectral “echoes” of Rembrandt’s canvases, but are consciously neither this nor that. Matoušek depicts his children, members of his family, his friends, and also places that he has visited. His paintings’ vagueness and mystery caught the eye of fashion designer Monika Drápalová and also suffuse their collaborative project “Spirit, are you there?” Monika’s denim objects take on a new – and in contemporary styles of clothing, unexpected – solemnity and spirituality. They thus shift the myth of denim both forward and back, since the historical roots of this phantasmal yet very concrete fabric reach all the back to the 18th century. The spirit always makes itself known! PhDr. Helena Jarošová František Matoušek
H. J. Helena Jarošová is a leading Czech fashion theorist with a focus on the aesthetics and philosophy of the body and fashion history. She lectures at various universities, among them the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design in Prague, Charles University’s Faculty of Art, and Brno’s Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts. She has written numerous books in her field, including Současná česká móda (Contemporary Czech Fashion).