Filip Svehla Media

Conversation with the artist. Filip Svehla 2022

If we examine your ouvre so far, it seems that you have come a long way from figurative experimentation to abstraction with a number of experiments along the way. Can you tell us about your artistic beginnings?

Yes, I think an element of “nervous” searching has been with me since the very beginning and accompanies me to this day. I remember the first time I went to present my work at the Academy and the professor told me that my portfolio looked like an encyclopedia of 20th century painting. (laughs) I remember my artistic beginnings very fondly, it was an element of adventure and enthusiasm. I made a small studio in my parents’ garage, where I painted on every surface I could get my hands on. I stretched my first canvas on the back of an old chair, others were on discarded window frames that I found at the dump. I stole my dad’s old paint he used for our fence. I think that do-it-your-self attitude and a feeling for the material is still part of me today.

Did you start painting on your own?

It was actually a bit of a coincidence. Originally, I was interested in music. I wanted to play the piano, but because I was already drawing a bit at that time, I also started attending art school. There I met a teacher who literally changed my life with his approach to teaching. He was able to impart his enthusiasm and attention, to convince us that the process of painting is interesting. We were twelve years old at the time, and he treated us like mature artists. He spoke to us as equals and placed much greater demands on us than was likely appropriate for our age. He treated us as adult artists. I remember we talked about Pollock, Kiefer, Schnabel and other artists. Of course, we couldn't understand a lot of it, but it awakened our fascination (with the subject)- many of his students then became professional artists, architects or designers.

In contrast to your work today, your early paintings seem a bit gloomy. They often feature historic architectural elements or props that one would look for in the past rather than modern society. Why is that?

It is probably partly related to my adolescence, but also to the environment in which I grew up. I was born and raised in Prague and the city has always seemed very romantic to me. It clearly nourished the somewhat decadent atmosphere of "Fin de siecle", the atmosphere that Kafka or Meyrink, for example, drew from. One of my strongest early memories is of a baroque rectory where my grandmother used to live. Its ambiance was strong because it had 18th century giant vaulted ceilings with an attic and a giant garden with a pond, all of which only incited my imagination in a specific way. Everything provoked my sensory perception, each room had a different scent, it had its own sounds, its own light. In addition, there was a lot of old junk everywhere, including a number of sacred objects - the Stations of the Cross - old paintings with scary themes. All of this was very intense for my senses. Although my way of working has changed

a lot since, I try to keep that approach.

That evokes an atmosphere of living outside of time ... and... nostalgia. That has always been an important feeling for me.

When did your work move from earthy colors with a single strong color flooding the canvas to the playfulness of all possible strong and pastel colors?

That was just after graduation. I was lucky to study with Jiří Sopek - one of the most prominent Czech colorists. He passed on to us the experience that painting meant "putting colors side by side". For a long time I had not known what he meant, but the year I spent in Valencia, Spain, where I went after school, helped me understand. It's actually a “classic “story of an European artist; southern light has inspired generations of painters and my experience has been the same. Different lighting conditions emphasize the value of color as the cornerstone of painting. Valencia brought lightness to my palette.

At this turning point what painters did you look up to?

I have always admired many painters and studied artists throughout history. So there were a lot of models, but I think I have had a lot of admiration for David Hockney. At the beginning it was the exhibition A bigger Picture at the London Academy. That simple whirlwind of energy and liveliness enchanted me. I also began to discover all the rich painting experience that is so clear in his [Hockney’s] interviews and books. At that point I actually understood that every good painting, even the most realistic one, is in a way abstract; it is always a reconstruction by means of painting. Another crucial point was Hockney's analysis of photography - that photography does not show reality as we see it, but quite the opposite – it fundamentally distorts it.

In Spain, however, you not only created paintings, but also a number of objects.

Yes, it is true. As I said at the beginning, I have always experimented with other media. I have always been very interested in architecture and I found an ideal environment for this admiration in Valencia. I lived in a rather strange neighborhood; there were old structures that were originally fishing huts intended for demolition, which were eventually preserved, but no one invested in those houses for many years, so they were gradually occupied by squatters who repaired their dwellings themselves. The result was quite bizarre, dilapidated ruins that burst with color - everywhere you could feel a human hand that repaired them just to be habitable. This combination of the faded and the southern merriment was a new trigger. I just started building such houses on a small scale - a series of painted boxes, which I later enlarged in the form of site-specific installations. That was also my way to express abstraction in my painting. This processual approach to creating objects, in

which I created shapes that I gradually smashed and reassembled, as I observed it in my surroundings, transitioned smoothly into my painting. For me, this started a rather adventurous journey, because long before that I had the impression that the process is what I enjoy most about, and here I suddenly found an opportunity to make the process one of the themes of the painting.

Compared to the Valencia paintings, the current ones are much more geometric. What led someone who is essentially an expressionist, to such a tightening of your creations?

It was the endlessness in which I was getting lost. I knew I was interested in color, but after a while I stopped understanding where the shape came from. Therefore, I also was not able to complete a number of paintings at that time. In retrospect, the most successful paintings have always been the ones based on some memory, mostly of some structure in architecture.

Gradually, however, I became more and more aware that I needed to set up much more limited boundaries within which I would move. Although I admire Howard Hodgkin immensely, I am increasingly drawn to more of a certain objective approach, objective relationships of shape and color, and this brings me almost to minimalism, or rather expressive minimalism.

Somewhere in the background is my observation of architecture. I am a true consumer, I enjoy walking through the urban landscape and wondering why I like some cities and not others. Probably what impressed me the most was the environment of the Orient, where against the background of a very rich and sensual world there is a certain very strict structure, but not imposed by some rational plan of an architect, but rather determined by the simple physical necessity and possibilities of simple technology. This was what drew my interest in the slums which I have seen and experienced in India, for example.

You often mention Islamic music, how does it relate to it?

Because it creates cacophonies for Western listeners, which I also try to use in choosing colors. However, the overall impression of these countries, their perception of corporeality and sensuality is much more intense than ours. What's more, especially in India, they represent this sensuality mainly by color. Even if I use a geometric structure, I still do not lose sight of the element of sensuality, not only the visual, but also haptic, olfactory, and auditory. Like Seurat, for example, he created a very ephemeral sensory impression using a very rational schedule. The whole art of the Orient is fascinating to me and I would like to continue to be inspired by it - for example, by its decorativeness. It is still an open question for me, but I am very attracted to the idea of rejecting the common European view that decorativeness in art is low brow. In the Orient, improving the environment with decor is something of great value. I think creating beautiful things that might not be in the foreground is a big challenge.

Is there a color that is essential for your painting?

I think it's red. Picasso mentions somewhere how he always needed to insert at least one red dot onto the canvas when finishing the painting, otherwise the canvas was not finished. Red is a very

distinctive color. It has enormous power in the image, which it passes on to each canvas in which it is contained. However, there are also situations when I try to avoid red in a targeted way. In that case, however, I purposefully omit red, and even omitting red is a mentally extremely demanding process, perhaps even more demanding than its direct use in the image. Because it constantly forces me to think about how to omit this color from the image, to displace it. And last but not least, how to achieve the same effect without its presence.

What does the saturation of individual colors mean to you?

Over time, the color saturation in my work is constantly gaining in importance and it was also one of my main themes during my artist residency in Miami. Whether it's a relationship of two pure colors, a pure color with halftone or gray, these are the areas where I perform the most fundamental experiments. It's an important issue for me. I realized this a long time ago thanks to old art. Titian, for example, is described as a great colorist, but that does not mean that he uses a wide range of colors, but that his paintings consist of a large number of mixed color shades, with only 2-3 absolutely pure color tones. It is these pure color tones that talk to each other - they communicate with each other and tell a story with the help of halftones and color transitions on the screen. A story the quality of which is recognizable when it forces the viewer to look at the image again and again, without getting tired of it, without the story ever ending.

How do you create your objects?

When I create objects, I think of construction and later destruction, because when creating objects I want to capture the process of deterioration, capture the ephemeral object, which, however, has already lived out its function and its current form has gained a subsequent change and was rebuilt according to other rules.

The process of rebuilding is very crucial for me. My main inspiration is the human evolution of existing structures over time. I mean, rebuilding the city according to current needs. However, in a way that sometimes the original form and architectural significance of the buildings is preserved and sometimes not. The original building could be incorporated to suit current needs. These transformations are closest to me in Valencia or in the Islamic countries - Morocco, Jordan... I often do not create according to a predetermined model to be implemented, but first I create a technical and partly architectural structure. From this structure, I then look for the final shape.

What do you think about when you are painting?

When creating images on one level, I draw from memories. I start from a strictly defined canvas layout and from the atmosphere and play of lights. Of course, I don't just think like that during the painting process. If the form of the image is already clearly defined, I move in my thoughts to another sphere and rhythm. It can be said that when I am painting I think of dancing - as dancing is a form of graceful movement, which in its elemental form is reflected in the painting and in the

canvases, as well as one’s mental state.

You are now at a crossroads. In your last paintings painted in Miami, you switched to small formats, which, however, create a specific large-format whole. What led you to change your form when creating each particular canvas? This form of image creation is something I have been thinking about for some time. At the moment, this is an experiment, the beginning of the next (discovery) journey. On the one hand, my older abstract work was more monumental, but much less fragmented. Shapes or elements were only hinted at. The current canvases are more complex,- a result of some earlier experiments - -[I’d] combine paintings or smaller formats into diptychs. I’d hang these “dual” canvases next to each other in the studio and play with the idea of hanging them in a specific location and creating a single larger painting. And it was in Miami that I reached the point where I suppressed my previous doubts and fears of the overly decorative nature of such an approach. Diptych is a painting with an inner story, but I had no idea if I could impart this story into the whole composition of small canvases. The result surprised me, because a completely new element appeared in my paintings - air and lightness.