Roman Trabura (*1960 Vsetín) did not graduate from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague until the 1990s. As he put it himself: “With regard to studying, under the ‘Bolsheviks’ it didn’t even occur to me to give it a go. In those days, I was more underground, a rocker and nihilist.” His art has few peers on the Czech scene. He is constantly trying out new formal approaches, which he transforms like a snake shedding its skin. At the same time, he remains faithful to certain of his main themes, such as landscape painting.

At Galerie Montmartre he is showing a series of “forests”, large canvases that are, however, some way removed from classic Czech landscapes. Roman Trabura’s art comes from a rich, sometimes unchained imagination that seeks to both enrapture and provoke the viewer. They are in a sense inner landscapes that are still very close to the real, physical world. He uses those antitheses deliberately, along with many other sources of inspiration. However, it is not a question of direct influence or synthesis, but a pluralistic conception. He places figures with empty speech bubbles in sublime, romantic landscapes inspired by Caspar David Friedrich. Likewise, one cannot help feeling that his fairytale or even mystical scenes hide a biting black humour.

In darkening woods, mysterious shadows of figures with bulbous, pimply noses sneak about between the trunks of trees. On the horizon, is a sky suffused with a magical light. People and animals are doing something, but we don’t know what it is. Things are starting to happen…

Marianna Placáková

Screenings:

Vlčí jáma (Den of Wolves) (1957, 93 min, directed by: Jiří Weiss)

Anatomie gagu (Anatomy of a Gag) (2008, 20 min, directed by: Josef Abrahám Jr.)

Tři přání (Three Wishes) (1958, 96 min, directed by: Ján Kadár, Elmar Klos)

There will be readings from Lenka Daňhelová’s collection Její bolest (Her Pain), Martin Skýpala’s Příběhy písmen (Stories of Letters), Natálie Paterová’s debut Uvnitř kosti duha (Rainbow Inside the Bone), and texts by the poet and journalist Ivan Motýl and poet Jiří Měsíc. Other authors who make it will also read.

The evening will be hosted by the editor-in-chief of Protimluv, Jiří Macháček.

He originally focused on producing works based on fractal and chaos theory.

In Miami in 1993 Placht came across paintings by the artist Pablo Amaringo inspired by the hallucinogen ayahuasca. He was so captivated by Amaringo’s work that he travelled to Pucallpa in Peru, where he lived for several years in the jungle with the Shipibo tribe, whose aesthetic has had a marked influence on him. As he himself put it: “I ended up at simple, geometric skeletons and I didn’t know how to liven things up. I was attracted to spontaneous painting and I felt that in the jungle there would be the shem that would bring the skeleton to life and wrap it in living tissue. And in the end that living tissue tore the skeleton apart completely.”

The first exhibition of Placht’s Amazonian paintings took place at Galerie Václava Špály in 1997. Since then he has exhibited regularly. He lives part of the time in Prague and part of the time in Pucallpa, where he has taught as a visiting professor at the local university.

At Galerie Montmartre Otto Placht is showing a series of paintings from this year entitled Kosmovize (Cosmovision). He assumes the role of a storyteller who has travelled between scattered Indian clans telling old stories and myths and serving as a unifying element of the tribe. In his oil paintings this ancient culture blends naturally with the present, becoming perhaps a kind of modern Peruvian mythology seen through the artist’s eyes. Foundational myths, such as one about the creation of plant life, are depicted, as are other myths alive among the aborigines to this day. An example is the legend of the sirens said to inhabit the local lake Yarinacocha and drag people beneath its surface. At the same, we encounter “postmodern” Indian society – tiny, chubby Shipibo tribesmen dancing and drinking alcohol in late-night bars.

Though Kosmovize swarms with figures that are not typical of Placht’s work, we can still make out the artist’s world with absolute certainty. It comprises gnarly stories of creation and life, diverse and parallel perspectives, and flowing forms that grow like vegetation one into the next, swallowing each other up. These are multilayered, overcrowded stories based on the incredibly complicated structure of life that the jungle represents.

As Otto Placht says: “The Amazon is an esoteric world hidden in the carpet of the primeval forest. Space is disappearing there, and the way of understanding is changing. There are no cardinal directions and you’re always wandering in circles. Everything between life and death takes place, in the earth, in the water, in the mud, in the air between the leaves, and in the crowns of the trees.”

Marianna Placáková

He originally focused on producing works based on fractal and chaos theory. In Miami in 1993 Placht came across paintings by the artist Pablo Amaringo inspired by the hallucinogen ayahuasca. He was so captivated by Amaringo’s work that he travelled to Pucallpa in Peru, where he lived for several years in the jungle with the Shipibo tribe, whose aesthetic has had a marked influence on him. As he himself put it: “I ended up at simple, geometric skeletons and I didn’t know how to liven things up. I was attracted to spontaneous painting and I felt that in the jungle there would be the shem that would bring the skeleton to life and wrap it in living tissue. And in the end that living tissue tore the skeleton apart completely.”

The first exhibition of Placht’s Amazonian paintings took place at Galerie Václava Špály in 1997. Since then he has exhibited regularly. He lives part of the time in Prague and part of the time in Pucallpa, where he has taught as a visiting professor at the local university.

At Galerie Montmartre Otto Placht is showing a series of paintings from this year entitled Kosmovize (Cosmovision). He assumes the role of a storyteller who has travelled between scattered Indian clans telling old stories and myths and serving as a unifying element of the tribe. In his oil paintings this ancient culture blends naturally with the present, becoming perhaps a kind of modern Peruvian mythology seen through the artist’s eyes. Foundational myths, such as one about the creation of plant life, are depicted, as are other myths alive among the aborigines to this day. An example is the legend of the sirens said to inhabit the local lake Yarinacocha and drag people beneath its surface. At the same, we encounter “postmodern” Indian society – tiny, chubby Shipibo tribesmen dancing and drinking alcohol in late-night bars.

Though Kosmovize swarms with figures that are not typical of Placht’s work, we can still make out the artist’s world with absolute certainty. It comprises gnarly stories of creation and life, diverse and parallel perspectives, and flowing forms that grow like vegetation one into the next, swallowing each other up. These are multilayered, overcrowded stories based on the incredibly complicated structure of life that the jungle represents.

As Otto Placht says: “The Amazon is an esoteric world hidden in the carpet of the primeval forest. Space is disappearing there, and the way of understanding is changing. There are no cardinal directions and you’re always wandering in circles. Everything between life and death takes place, in the earth, in the water, in the mud, in the air between the leaves, and in the crowns of the trees.”

Marianna Placáková