The Promising Painter Filip Nádvorník Connects His Life Roles With the Canvas
STYLE
www.posiv.cz ǀ 77
at school I earned my living doing carpentry and
woodwork, and this continues today. Right after
graduation I started farming on several hectares and
now I run a small farm in the Jeseníky Mountains. We
raise sheep, cattle, pigs, poultry and grow seasonal
vegetables on a small acreage. So now I function
as a painter-carpenter-farmer (depending on the
season) and it is almost impossible for me not to have
these worlds intertwined on canvas. This contact
between the worlds of liberal arts, utilitarian craft and
agriculture interests me.
Do you intend to further explore or develop certain
aspects of this in your upcoming projects? What
works are you currently working on and what topics
are you interested in in the future?
For two years I have been working on a series of
paintings under the provisional titles Silesian Gothic
and Promised Land. These were the names of my
last major exhibitions. The first title is a bit of a pun.
It combines the title of the painting American
Gothic by the regionalist painter Grant Wood with
the work of the Sudeten German painter from
Opava, Paul Gebauer. The Promised Land is then
a suggestive title that has roots both with the people
of Israel, in the settlement of America, and in today's
neo-hippie movements. My paintings have aesthetics
and meaning allusions to cowboys and pioneers, to
life in the Czech-German borderlands, as well as to
biblical imagery. I think I will stay with these themes
and influences for some time to come.
How do you perceive your role among the emerging
artistic generation? What do you think you can bring
to the contemporary art context with your art?
I don't think too much about my role or mission within
the art world. I rather concentrate on my own work.
Moreover, I have the feeling that the generation is
changing so fast that I don't belong to the generation
of, for example, contemporary art students anymore,
they are interested in quite different topics. But I think
that just by operating on the periphery I can bring
a certain authenticity. Contemporary art theorists
often mention the term New Sincerity, and I like to
identify with that.
Are you planning to participate in an exhibition?
A solo exhibition or project now? Where can we see
your latest works in the near future?
The exhibition from the symposium at the Miroslav
Kubík Gallery in Litomyšl is just ending and in May
I should be exhibiting in tandem with the painter
Honza Kostohryz at the Chemistry Gallery in Prague,
where I would like to invite the readers.
Filipe, thank you for the interview.
“
My painngs are very much inuenced
by my " worldly" occupaons. I funcon
as a painter-carpenter-farmer.
”
Pionýr III, 70 × 50 cmAgnus Dei, 130 × 100 cm
Text: redakce
Foto: archiv
Filipa Nádvorníka