“Visually Addictive,”
Gallery 17/18, Ottawa, CA
"The current joint exhibition with Canadian artist Ron Martin, marks a departure for Vlček. For the first time the artist turned to the CD as a marking tool instead of a brush. Moreover, he replaced canvas with birch wood. Vlček claims...“I was attracted to this material because of thefact that it was made in Canada, a land vast and wild, full of space andnature”. The material presented a challenge that, allegedly, took the artist by surprise. The new substrate reacted and behaved differently: suddenly his paintings started to fill up with organic, curved shapes unlike anything he had been compelled to do in the past. “…I found this difficult to reconcile, fighting to come to a justification for it, admits Vlček, despite this, I realized that I had somehow intuitively created these paintings, as if instructed by the material they were on. In theend my solution was to create paired paintings, one featuring white organic lines with glimpses of birch wood to be exhibited alongside paintings featuring harsher geometrical edges.” This results in pairs referencing passion andspontaneity on the one hand and logic and premeditation on the other, two opposing poles illustrated by art.
The artist’s use of the CD rather than the long-favored vinyl addresses questions about digitalization and, by extension, virtualization. After all, the CD was not only revolutionary in making soundand music even more portable, but also for being a digital format as opposed toits analog predecessors. In this way it opened the door for music to join thevirtual realm. The CD was a gateway to music and sound’s transfiguration into files utterly untethered by a physical carrier (music is increasingly morefrequently streamed rather than played). Ironically it is simultaneously, as of now, the last physical carrier of sound and music. It therefore occupies aspecial space between nostalgia and innovation and materiality and weightlessness. The CD’s appearance in Vlček’s new-paired seriesis hence fitting; it too is an attempt at reconciliation, a bridge between reasoning, and a meditation between hard science and transcendental emotion."
