Permanent Exhibition
Philosophy of Art Creation / Anna Obrova and Vladimir Obr, Czech Artists
"I’m attentive to myself and to the way I meet my needs. I’m attentive to the air, water, animals, birds. I hear their joy and their lament. I’m attentive to the heavens with its radiance and darkness, with its variability and portents. Everything is supported by the rules given us. Grandeur shows itself in big and small things. Only we alone are able to tear it down today and daily with our eyes. Some like this, but not me. He who voluntarily submits, will continue to do so. He who understands the connections interlaced in our collective breath, will continue to do so.
The artistic process in one pole, just like the unswerving mathematics in the other, hold good backwards and, for now, even forwards and are just possibilities in how to portray the stories that objectively happen.
One pulse can be heard. Boom, boom. It is transmitted throughout the whole fabric of creation. I try to hear this beat, to take it in, to experience it. To understand it with the entire mass to the furthest corners a person can see – even there, where he can only surmise that the door may open into other worlds hidden from our eyes for now. I try to perceive this pulse in a small drop of water that sticks to the finger when it touches the bark of a tree dripping with rain. I stand quietly and observe this finger, when I become aware that I’m breathing. And this is the true miracle that I’m trying to capture in my work,” says artist Vladimír Obr.
The artist's creative process does not lie in looking for forms, but in the most inward opening to what happens in the present in a given moment. It is a state similar to purification, when forms originate by hand, a hand that moves while being led by another force than during other times. He tries to abandon his own self and shivers in common perception, and his hands and eyes work alone and often the artist is surprised by what they have made.
Vladimír Obr does not complete his notions of shapes, but of stories. It’s been a long time since he looked for a connection and a common sign, but the essence itself, which tirelessly assaults him with the question: Where are you heading?
And the artist answers with his work: If you want to be a lighthouse, find a cliff and start to shine. But be aware that the light has its essence – and so does the rock. And what you want to do is up to you alone.
Vladimír Obr, by his own free will and by intentionally giving up his own participation, accepts the uniformity of human limitations, stripping subjectivity till he pushes it as far as his own forces allow. It isn’t important how he looks or who he is, but rather what he thinks about. And what he thinks about, he does. The stronger he wants to say something, the more he remains quiet. He purposefully does not storm nor scream, because the strength of the voice doesn’t make the argument stronger. Silence is dear to him, and he shares that silence with us in his work.
As the artist says: “We’re approaching the point when the circle closes. I would like my work to be of help in this moment.”
Archival Pigment Prints in Museum Quality by Vladimir Obr
