Petr Zly

The Ashes of Malevich

Artist’s Statement

The Ashes of Malevich is a project of interpretation. The ashes refered to here are not the ashes of the body of Kasimir Severinovich Malevich, but refer to his statement concerning how something, some kernel or leftover of his art will survive the inevitably destructive course of the history of his time. From the position of the current time and my practice situated within it, interpretation is the method available to form a relationship and dialogue with the work of this seminal figure of avant-gaurd art and in a way make the time visible.

My method of working could be called lyrical constructivism in that I assemble geometric elements rather then depicting already existing forms, but quite opposed to The Constructivists of the early twentieth century I would reject their project towards perfection and utopia and substitute and instead make room for chaos, loss, dysfunction, tragedy, and entropy.

My work is concerned with actual existence in space, what it is to be in the oceanic medium of space, a situation at once ecstatic and precarious,the hidden subject of sculpture being bodily existence.. Space in this case ceases to be a neutral and measurable three dimensional grid, and becomes a situation where forces of chaos, assertion, evolution and destruction play themselves out. In the latest group of sculptures the emphasis is on a tension between dispersion/disintegration and union/conglomeration.

As my work is concerned with form, space, the material is not really my subject. The thing that I need from materials is all about the working process, which I need to be as close as possible to the flow and spontaneity of painting. This ability to rework and reform allows me to investigate balances and organisations of form and space that are neither ordered of chaotic, but rather alive in a precarious way.

My intention is to take abstraction to a place where it understands life, the life that generates and decays. The life that is a mess. I want an abstraction that is born into a situation it has to somehow cope with.

My work is created not from a story or reference to something, but out of dealing with, confronting the tension between antagonistic elements. Each piece becomes a temporary resolution, a precarious balance. When I complete a piece it automatically suggests another possible resolution, so I make another foray into no-man’s-land.

In this way a narrative is created, from one piece’s completion to the next.