Coincidence
Jiří Matějů
17.06.–28.08. 2020 Kvalitář Gallery, Prague
Artist: Jiří Matějů
Curator: Monika Čejková
Photos: Zdeněk Porcal, Studio Flusser
The exhibition entitled Coincidence in Kvalitář Gallery represents Jiří Matějů new work – paintings and sculptures that refer to the concept of synchronicity introduced by the psychoanalyst Carl G. Jung. One of the oft-quoted specific cases of synchronicity mentioned by Jung con- cerns a beetle, the golden scarab. One of his female pati- ents, brought up an exponent of cartesian philosophy, told him during a sitting about a dream in which someone gave her a golden scarab. Suddenly the room was filled with the noise of an insect striking the window pane from the outside – when Jung opened the window and caught hold of the insect, it turned out to be a rose chafer, a member of the Scarabaeidae family, similar to the one in the patient’s dream. It was about the contemporaneity of two events lin- ked by meaning, but not cause. In the case of this sitting, it concerned a decisive phase that disrupted the patient’s rigid interpretation of the world and contributed to her psychological renovation and spiritual development.
The selection of this motif – synchronicity – points to Matějů’s long-term interest in philosophy and psychology, for which he is constantly endeavouring to find visual metaphors. In his practice, Matějů also indi- rectly touches upon certain aspects of late modernist painting, depicting the outer limits of painting, such as the painting surface and its shape, or the attributes of pigments. His work with the harmony of colours and the choice of form – in the past he used infinite networks of lines, for example, progressively replacing them around 2010 with the boundless space of “crumpled” art- works, employing a technique similar to Froissage – also reflects the attention he pays to maths, geometry, as well as astronomy and quantum phys- ics. The artist thus to various degrees visually, symbolically and metaphorically transpo- ses some of his findings from these sciences into the area of art. The exhibition also walks a tightrope above the linear conception of time – over its duration, the artist will add ob- jects and continue working on specific paintings. This will be an attempt to remind us of the individual phases of paintings that may over the course of the work be considered definite, and often remain hidden from the viewer.