text to the openning of the exhibition the Transmitter, Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové, 13. 9.2000, September 2000
Openning – Introduction
Irena Jůzová (1965) lives and creates in Prague, however she was born in Hradec Králové and that is the reason why she presented here a cross-section of her work. Irena Jůzová studied at the Secondary Decorative Art School in Brno (1980 – 1984), then she came to Prague, where at the Academy of Arts, Architecture & Design in the studio of Jan Solper she studied for two years the discipline Book Culture and Font. Her desire for a free creation led her to a crucial decision to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in the graphic studio of Ladislav Čepelák. She got directly to the centre of action and sometime after the revolution she passes to the newly formed studio of Monumental Creation of Aleš Veselý. In 1994, she graduated and a year later she started to work as an assistant professor in the same studio. Irena Jůzová received a number of scholarships, from which the majority was connected with a residence abroad; she participated at many group exhibitions. In 1992, she received the special award at the Biennale of Young GERMINATIONS 7 – Magasin in Grenoble, France. Space, this is the first association which occurs to me during a complex observation of the Irena Jůzová’s work. The desire to step out of the area of surface is already evident in the graphics and large format woodcuts that preceded the later realizations. Space is shown through an object in it, but as if it was pulled out of its natural sphere. The relationship of space and an object is dynamic. In this period, the author used material such as aircraft papers, on which she applied transparent offset colors, as if trying to take off, to get away and make the space transparent.
A break came in 1991, when she created her first spatial object with the name the Transmitter. It foreshadows more: further work with light, sound media, but also an interest in invisible energy and communication through the work with its viewer. Trying to grasp the space in the most plastic way eventually led the artist to create a wide range of interactive objects and installations, which communicated with the viewer or the space directly. For example, The Desk for Twenty Players, Project with a Camera or a three-part installation Places I., which central cabin with halogens and a fan is presented at this exhibition. The author understands space as a challenge and by her art she enriches it and sensitively completes it, but also throws it off its balance.
Just in her solo exhibition Weird Games in the Gallery of Václav Špála in Prague (see Ateliér no.12/96) she pierced the entrance area with hundreds of gleaming stainless steel sabers and sounded the area by an enhanced record of electrical discharges acquired during a demonstration in the Physical department of the Czech Technical University. The visitor then walked inside the gallery trough an invisible corridor of tension between the blades of huge fans consisting of the two-meter sabres. After overcoming this gate a visitor read two texts – framed xerox articles – and he was set quite bluntly in a reality of the world in which we live. The world is harsh and unpredictable. The author gave way to taste the feeling of insecurity, threat, fateful coincidences and consciousness of the human beings’ eternal groping.
Other light and sound object The Apparent Voices, she created for early Gothic chapel of the House at the Stone Ring during the Biennial of Young Bell 96 (see Ateliér no.4/97), in which a never ending sequence of the records of everyday sounds from the station in Hradec Králové gives the feeling of succesful confrontation with ages buildings’ time and a notification that this world is recognizable through the voices of the soul.
The effort to incorporate art into everyday life often appears so far in the drawing sketches and projects. Irena Jůzová placed objects of industrial materials to public spaces, such as railway station halls, corridors or buildings, entrance areas, and so they could be discovered after more careful view of a more receptive viewer. The limit of the natural world perception has been crossed over and stolen many time. Through art it can be asked to stop, calm down and communicate in dialogue.
For Irena Jůzová is typical courage and real desire to find her share of truth. In her work is mixed purely natural and subtle feeling of perceiving woman with brutal industria roaring somewhere beyond illegally exceeded borders of natural world. Her last work All about Love or Silver Helmet as if increasingly called for human touch and contact with them. Cold geometry is revived by chance element and intensely evokes the intent to humanize alienated reality. Objects become more interactive, but also in a way more ethereal. It is evident that she is not satisfied with the manifested material dimensions of space, she think, knows that there are other significant layers. The interest in invisible and untouchable flows and streams of energy, in events which are happening behind the condensed material dimension, are now the main topic and creative way of the artist.
Lucie Jandová