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Výstava Václav Zoubek - Tichý život
Exhibition Václav Zoubek - Quiet Life
Event by: Galerie U lávky
Location: Galerie u lávky, Povltavská 42, Praha-Troja
Talks & discussions, Exhibitions
About event
Václav Zoubek
My acquaintance with the painter Václav Zoubek led me to think about how relationships between people are formed and how a relationship is formed with a work of art.
Long before my personal meeting, I heard frequent references to Václav Zoubek's Rákovnik gallery Rabase, which spread in art circles. I realized that this is probably not just a museum of that famous native - as I originally thought - but that it is also an active gallery for contemporary art. However, such an enterprise must have a driving force, someone who understands the matter, who is passionate about the matter and takes it as his own. Well, when I finally met this person not long ago, I was amazed not only by the extent of his professional knowledge and organizational skills, but also by his own painting work. It would be easier for me to believe that two specialized, extremely efficient individuals are hiding under the Václav Zoubek brand.
Václav Zoubek's painting is painting in the truest sense of the word. This is not worn much today. However, he remains independent, faithful to his intuition and honest with himself.
From his entire rich subject index, the author decided on a monothematically focused collection only on still lifes. We can thus focus on how he is able to discover new and new beauty in seemingly banal things with ever-fresh and ever-renewable eyes. The old Dutch masters already thought of making simple objects of everyday use the main protagonists of the picture. Since those times, thousands of vases, flowers, goblets, glasses and bottles, tablecloths and curtains, trays and plates, musical instruments, playing cards and pipes, fruits and vegetables, carcasses of animals, fish and birds have appeared on canvases. Much of this can also be found on the canvases of Václav Zoubek. However, we can easily find a plastic crate or single-cell batteries there. Baroque still lifes often hid symbolic messages that we don't really understand today, but it's enough that they bring us closer to the privacy of our predecessors in a unique way. Even our painter invites us into the intimate world of a kind of household of our times. Of course he is interested in color, shadow and light, compositional layout, shape and modeling, but that message about the world and time is part of it. And this is true, even if it is an idealization of the desired harmony and peace, probably after moments of pleasure, as revealed by the pink feet, which seem to have remained in the cut-out by mistake. For the sets of objects, the author chooses clearly defined lighting and it seems as if he could paint not only clear glass or reflections in a mirror, but also clear air itself. The colors are composed with the delicacy of a gourmet and the shapes are modeled with the precision of a scientist. Emotion controlled by rationality creates an unsettling tension that I think characterizes this painter.
If this exhibition makes you interested in the other works of Václav Zoubek, you will recognize not only the women who hide in the background of these still lifes, but also the remarkably poetic conceived motifs from nature, landscape and human settlements.
Jan Kavan
November 2024
My acquaintance with the painter Václav Zoubek led me to think about how relationships between people are formed and how a relationship is formed with a work of art.
Long before my personal meeting, I heard frequent references to Václav Zoubek's Rákovnik gallery Rabase, which spread in art circles. I realized that this is probably not just a museum of that famous native - as I originally thought - but that it is also an active gallery for contemporary art. However, such an enterprise must have a driving force, someone who understands the matter, who is passionate about the matter and takes it as his own. Well, when I finally met this person not long ago, I was amazed not only by the extent of his professional knowledge and organizational skills, but also by his own painting work. It would be easier for me to believe that two specialized, extremely efficient individuals are hiding under the Václav Zoubek brand.
Václav Zoubek's painting is painting in the truest sense of the word. This is not worn much today. However, he remains independent, faithful to his intuition and honest with himself.
From his entire rich subject index, the author decided on a monothematically focused collection only on still lifes. We can thus focus on how he is able to discover new and new beauty in seemingly banal things with ever-fresh and ever-renewable eyes. The old Dutch masters already thought of making simple objects of everyday use the main protagonists of the picture. Since those times, thousands of vases, flowers, goblets, glasses and bottles, tablecloths and curtains, trays and plates, musical instruments, playing cards and pipes, fruits and vegetables, carcasses of animals, fish and birds have appeared on canvases. Much of this can also be found on the canvases of Václav Zoubek. However, we can easily find a plastic crate or single-cell batteries there. Baroque still lifes often hid symbolic messages that we don't really understand today, but it's enough that they bring us closer to the privacy of our predecessors in a unique way. Even our painter invites us into the intimate world of a kind of household of our times. Of course he is interested in color, shadow and light, compositional layout, shape and modeling, but that message about the world and time is part of it. And this is true, even if it is an idealization of the desired harmony and peace, probably after moments of pleasure, as revealed by the pink feet, which seem to have remained in the cut-out by mistake. For the sets of objects, the author chooses clearly defined lighting and it seems as if he could paint not only clear glass or reflections in a mirror, but also clear air itself. The colors are composed with the delicacy of a gourmet and the shapes are modeled with the precision of a scientist. Emotion controlled by rationality creates an unsettling tension that I think characterizes this painter.
If this exhibition makes you interested in the other works of Václav Zoubek, you will recognize not only the women who hide in the background of these still lifes, but also the remarkably poetic conceived motifs from nature, landscape and human settlements.
Jan Kavan
November 2024