Thrown Into The Muddy Waters
8.5. 2025 - 8.6. 2025
I would compare Jiří Baštýř's paintings to an explosion that overwhelms all the viewer's senses until there is only one option left - to observe. The tension built up by the author is more acute with every second and in a way more pressing. In spite of this, Baštýř's paintings have the ability to enchant the viewer, enveloping them and making them feel the specific atmosphere that emanates from the works. The central motif of the exhibited works are muddy figures, the artist's hypothetical doubles, a kind of entity with which the viewer interacts. They are silent figures who speak to you only through grimaces and facial expressions. Most mesmerizing, however, are the figures with fixed gazes, who put us in situations that the author himself describes as when you meet “something” in the dark. You see it, it sees you, and you both wish that you had rather missed each other in the darkness, but at the same time you also recognize yourself in the “something” you meet. The bastard, through his paintings, encourages us to look inside ourselves, not into places that are familiar to us, but into the unexplored and dark corners of our consciousness and subconscious, but we must take this journey into the darkness without light. According to the well-known psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, knowing one's own darkness is the best method of dealing with other people's darkness, and I think that Baštýř's paintings work in a similar way, giving us a glimpse into our own darkness.
The search for one's own identity and the overall motif of the double or alter ego permeates contemporary society, and thus also permeates the artistic sphere. Despite the fact that it is one of the themes that can be observed in the author's work, it is not artificially inserted here, on the contrary, it emerges naturally from the paintings and is a kind of mirror of society. After all, who among us nowadays does not have a digital double living a “better version” of our lives, while our real self stuck in the tangible world has to wash clothes, earn a living, deal with inconveniences, while our digital double is materialized on the occasions of pleasant vacations, study and career achievements, and sunset walks. The exhibition Thrown Into The Muddy Waters “throws” us into the murky waters of our own interiority. Baštýř's paintings draw us in like deep river mud, and at the moment we least expect it, we can see ourselves in the reflection of the surface.
curator: Štěpán Mikulenka