October 2005
The Reason, Saturday, Production – the titles of the individual thirds of the exhibition project in etc. gallery tend to a slightly misleading collocation. With great intensity, Luděk Rathouský and Marek Meduna divided one exhibition term into three intermezzos. For maximum effect, they augmented the programme with entertaining music performances. The quintessentiality of the whole event was supported by slices of bread with lard and onion and barrels of beer. Who would claim that this is not art? The authors are absolutely serious: great art and small pleasures.
The Reason, Luděk Rathouský (further just Rathouský or L.R.)
The Reason is a well-chosen title for the first of Rathouský’s exhibitions. In the intimate space of the gallery, Rathouský introduced four large-screen paintings paraphrasing the performances of his colleagues. Performance as the reason for painting is not merely a witty concept, but also a logical reference to the fact that the traditional means of recording the events like photographs, video, film or word have their own limitations and distortions, and a meditation on the merits of expression and communication as well as painting. Ultimately, they can stand as independent works of art. Rathouský contributes to the discourse of the perpetually problematic function of contemporary painting with a new application of the transcriptional value of painting; he proves the further possibilities of painting as documentation. It prolongs the life-expectancy of the event which is, unlike the painting, definite in the time horizon.
Rathouský’s painted interpretations are not documentations in the real sense of the word; such anachronism would not be worthy of either the effort or the discussion. Rathouský provides certain information about the event in his painting, but at the same time develops its meaning in accordance with his own views. With the inventive compositions and contemporary monumental and relaxed painting techniques, he pulls the painting back to its independence. Thus he reaches the tension between concept and pure painting, in which he searches for new contents and overlappings.
Edith Jeřábková, 2005
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