Exhibition Review, Pavel Korbička: Space of Perception

During 9.12.2021 and 13.2.2022 at the Telegraph Gallery in Olomouc artist Pavel Korbička (*1972) created a site-specific installation called Space of Perception[1]. The main material he used were polycarbonate plates and neon tubes attached on the polycarbonate walls. A spiral labyrinth was created in reflection of the gallery space on the ground floor. The visitor can go through, following one direction and leave out in different doors than you entered. Once you dive into the labyrinth your senses are influenced by the blurred light and different width of the pathway. Art historian and theoretic Ladislav Kesner writes in an exhibition catalogue following: His light installation do not carry narrative or symbolic meanings; their purpose is primarily to encourage the viewer to become aware of and reflect on the psychological and physical sensations and experiences of shape, space, light and movement within and around these objects (Kesner and Macík, Ficová 2021). And truly, the installation is all about visual and body perception. Even the author was asked what can we expect from the exhibition, a question by Mira Macík[2], the curator of the Telegraph Gallery. Korbička responded: I offer the viewers a space they can enter, and through their movement they can activate certain light moments and phenomena on the curved surfaces of the polycarbonate panel installation (Kesner and Macík, Ficová 2021).

The usage of fluorescent light tubes may recommend the work of American artist Dan Flavin[3], who used the tubes in different colours and positions in the galleries and even in the church in Milan[4] or in the former railway station in Berlin[5]. Dan Flavin worked with light from 1960s up to his dead in 1996. He is considered as one of the leading figures of minimalist artists. The minimalists were preoccupied with the man´s perception of their artistic works. The movement of the visitor´s body, different perspectives of view and shifted perception of space was their main goals from 60s. Pavel Korbička works in a same way. His site-specific installation reacts on the specific conditions of the given space and opens the new point of view. His work is come out from phenomenology same as the minimalist were influenced by the book Phenomenology of Perception[6] issued in 1945 by French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Kabička explores the spaces with his installations and also by the dance movement like in the project Dance Calligraphy[7] first performed in 1996.

The spiral form

The exhibition Space of Perception in Telegraph Gallery comes with the site-specific installation made from polycarbonates plates and light tubes. The polycarbonate planes are arranged in a way, they create two spiral forms. Looking on the layout of the exhibition the two cochlea shapes are stucked together. The spiral form was used even earlier in Korbička´s work called Blue Way[8], at the Václav Havel Airport in Prague in 2008. Another spiral form was used by the author in the Galerie die Aktualität des Schonen in Liberec in 2010 at the exhibition called in[9]. Korbička also proposed two spirals for the Czechoslovak exhibition pavilion for the 56th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art in 2015. His design is visible on website[10]. He has also prepared an exhibition called Deflection[11] in the Brno House of Arts in 2019, where one of the exhibition rooms was fulfilled by polycarbonate spiral.

The spiral form has been used in art since the ancient times. Antient Chinese artists used spiral form as a representation of the sun. Greek painters decorated vases by spiral forms called Music and Armoured Train (Marinković, Stanković, Štrbac, Tomić and Ćetković 2012). In 1923 the Dadaist artist Marcel Duchamp draw his Disks Bearing Spirals[12]. The Spirals[13] were also used by Dutch artist Maurits Cornelis Escher in the mid-20th century. Spiral from fluorescent light tubes appeared in 1967 when Bruce Nauman created his Window or Wall Sign[14]. The biggest visible spiral artform is land art project done on Great Salt Lake in Utah USA by Robert Smithson. The artwork called Spiral Jetty[15] was done in 1970s.

Also, some architectural works have been done in spiral forms since the antique times to contemporary skyscrapers. In the ninth century were designed the 55 meters height minaret in Samara (Iraq), called Malwya (snail shell). According to the design of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was build the new Guggenheim Museum in New York in 1956. The building has an empty atrium where you climb up by spiral ramp. The contemporary buildings using spiral forms are skyscrapers Turning torso[16], the residential tower designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava and build in Swedish city Malmö in 2005 and educational tower Mode Gakuen[17] in Nagoya (Japan) by Japanese architectural firm Nikken Sekkei completed in 2008. Even many spiral staircases have been done during centuries. Pavel Korbička reminds with his installation Space of Perception the double spiral staircase in the gothic church of St. Moritz in Olomouc.

Labyrinths of light

The labyrinth itself is an artistic theme same as spiral form since ancient times. The Greek mythology is describing well known labyrinth proposed by Daidalos to prison Mínótauros, a creature with man body and bull head. The theme of Daidalos´s labyrinth was widely used to decorate ceramics. Generally, about labyrinths, its types and usage has been written in the book Mazes and Labyrinths: A General Account of their History and Development (1922)[18] by William H. Matthews. In the book there is widely described the firsts labyrinths in Egypt, in ancient Greece and Italy. The book also brings up the theme of labyrinth and maze in literature. There is written: The romantic and mysterious flavour of the words “maze” and “labyrinth” has induced many a writer of fiction to adopt one or the other as the theme of a story, or as the setting of some of the action in a story, or else to use the name as an attractive symbolical title for a work (Matthews 1922, p. 193).

Also 20th century Catalan artist Joan Miró was preoccupied by the theme of labyrinth. His series of sculptures and ceramics created during 60s and 70s for the French art collector Marguerite Aimé Maeght are exhibited in the garden next to the Fondation Maeght (opened in 1964)[19] in the southeast of France. The building of Fondation was designed by Spanish architect Josep Lluis Sert who also stands behind the proposal of the Juan Miró Fundació in Barcelona (established 1975). 

The exhibition In the Labyrinth held during February to April 2019 in the gallery Large Glass in London was inspired by the book Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths (2018) by British writer and journalist Charlotte Higgins. Higgins starts with the Daidalos myth and continue with many examples of labyrinth e.g. the mosaic labyrinth in the church of San Vitale in Ravenna[20] (Higgins 2018, p. 147, 148). She also describes the contemporary work by Mark Wallinger. The artist Mark Wallinger was commissioned to make a permanent artwork for the London Underground, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of its opening in 1863. And Higgins continues with the artist intention: Wallinger decided to express the infinite entanglement and complexity of a traveller’s path through the city by installing, at every station, a plaque depicting a labyrinth, each subtly different from the last [21] (Higgins 2018, p. 154, 155).

The use of artificial light in art has its own history. Regarding Korbička´s work Ilona Víchová mentions in her dissertation thesis Artificial Light in Art those sources for Korbička´s thinking: legacy of Zdeněk Pešánek and Stanislav Zippe kinetic and light artworks, scientific and humanistic shifts during the 20th century, subjective and relativisation processes leading to the investigations of data from the individual perspective (Víchová 2020, p. 30). Another question of light mentions American architect Morris Lapidus. He said for the book Conversastion with architects (1973) in discussion with H. Klotz and J.W. Cook that: (…) people are like moths; you make a bright light, and they´re going to head for the light, not knowing why (Cook and Klotz 1973, p. 151). The situation in Telegraph Gallery in Olomouc is determined by the covering of windows or let’s say supressing of natural light that differs from the artificial source. Artificiallight spreads out on all sides from a point source; the rays are not parallel. This difference results in two very different types of shadow and thus differences in lightness-darkness condition between inside and outside spaces (Grütter 2015, p. 304). In Korbička´s installation, the colourful light sources can be seen diffused through the partially translucent polycarbonate plates. The artificial light is stable comparing with the natural light, so the only change happens during our movement.  

Also, talking about light, the polycarbonate curved walls play its role. The gauzy material dissolves the colourful light into variety of tones. It is a question of the amount of reflected light. It is similar in the case of colour vision: The surface reflects not only a certain quantity of light but also light of a certain wavelength. Depending on the wavelength of the light falling on the retina, we perceive a certain colour[22] (Grütter 2015, p. 322). So, the design plays beside our body movement also with our visual sense. German art theoretic Rudolf Arnheim has come with the thought, that description of colours is much harder than shapes. He has written in his book Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye (1954) following: (…) it takes a particular mental attitude to organize one’s world of colour according to these purely perceptual characteristics. Instead, a person’s world is a world of objects, whose given perceptual properties matter in varying degrees (Arnheim 1997, p. 331). Arnheim also writes about translucency of the openings in cathedrals. The church windows of the early Middle Ages had a greenish or yellowish tinge and were translucent but not transparent (Arnheim 1997, p. 334). The used polycarbonate plates of Korbička´s installation are same as the windows of the gothic churches, not transparent rather translucent and thanks to it one can see another person, his or her silhouette, but not the details. 

American successor of the art critique and theoretic Clement Greenberg, an art critic and historian from 1960s Michael Fried was preoccupied by affinity of art with theatre effects. His interest was basically how the artwork influence the perception of a viewer, e.g. how the heavy steel plates of Richard Serra makes us perceive our own physical presence in the space of an art piece (Pospiszyl 1998, p. 22). Fried´s widely discussed essay Art and Objecthood [23] from 1967 deals with the minimalism, or with “Literal art” how the art was named in the text. Fried wrote: Literalist sensibility is theatrical because, to begin with, it is concerned with the actual circumstances in which the beholder encounters literalist work (Fried 1967). The same effect as with Serra´s steel plates come in the Garden of Exile (1999) next to the Jewish Museum by architect Daniel Libeskind. The visitor is confined between the rigid grid of concrete ,,stelas”. In the same city of Berlin, you can experience the same feeling of crampedness in the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (2004) designed by the architect Peter Eisenman. Same as Serra´s heavy plates, Libeskind Garden of Exile and Eisenman Holocaust Memorial happened in Korbička´s light labyrinth as the space in the space. It places the visitor´s senses into unusual situation.   

Perception of space

The exhibition is a continuation of Korbička´s space and perception investigations. The theme of spiral form and labyrinth is deeply rooted in the world of art. Also the work with artificial light, especially with fluorescent tubes is well known at least since Dan Flavin (1933 – 1996). Nevertheless, Korbička is not only copying these themes. He is rather inventing new approaches how to put these motifs into the specific architectural configurations. Italian architect Bruno Zevi writes in his book Architecture as space: How to Look at Architecture[24] (1948) about specificity of architecture, about its three dimensionality. He wrote: Architecture, however, is like a great hollowed-out sculpture which man enters and apprehends by moving about within it (Zevi, Gendel 1993, p. 22). Pavel Korbička works in its installation like an architect. He builds curved walls made of polycarbonate plates lighten by the fluorescent tubes.

American architect of the 20th century Morris Lapidus said for the book Conversation with architects following: One curved wall in an early design, the Tugendhat House, set me thinking, and kept me thinking in curves to this very day. And he also mentioned, that: people don´t walk in straight lines except when they are going somewhere in a hurry (Cook and Klotz 1973, p. 150). Korbička´s interventions into straight gallery spaces make people walk around the rounded walls. There we must mention, that Korbička teaches in Brno, where stands the villa Tugendhat[25] (1930) by Mies van der Rohe. The orthogonal layout of the house is in harmony with its rounded ebony wood partition forming the dining space and rounded brick and glass walls forming the staircase from the ground floor to the main living space. The rounded walls form space and makes visitor to change his direction.

The special situation happens at the Telegraph gallery in Olomouc, where are two spirals in the exhibition space and visitor can perceive two directions. The author himself refers to the two-spindle staircase of the gothic St. Moritz Church, where you can climb up by one flight of stairs and go down by another (Kesner and Macík, Ficová 2021). It is also good to point out that Korbička studied at the studio of Stanislav Kolíbal at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and that Kolíbal is beside the sculptor also thought scenographer interested in art combining with architecture and space.   

French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote in his book Phenomenology of Perception[26]: ‘Good form’ is not brought about because it would be good in itself in some metaphysical heaven; it is good form because it comes into being in our experience (Merleau-Ponty, Smith 2005, p. 44). And clearly to truly understand Korbička´s art one must visit the installation and make his own experience. The Space of Perception in Olomouc Telegraph Gallery was for sure not the last chance to experience Korbička´s artistic world. Hope there will be more investigations of space, even with sound involvement[27] [28], which is another preoccupation of Korbička´s art series.












Notes 

[1] Press release of Pavel Korbička: Space of Perception in the Telegraph Gallery available on: https://telegraph.cz/en/space-perception

[2] Mira Macík is a curator of Telegraph Gallery since October 2021, more on: https://telegraph.cz/en/node/570

[3] More about Dan Flavin and his work on: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/dan-flavin

[4] Dan Flavin design his fluorescent tubes as an intervention in church Santa Maria Annunciata in Chiese Rossa in Milan few days before his dead in 1996. The design was installed a year later. More on: https://www.notiziemondoimmobiliare.it/designearchitettura/dan-flavin-santa-maria-chiesa-rossa-unopera-luce-sacro-profano/

[5] The fluorescent installation by Dan Flavin in the gallery of contemporary art, former railway station building Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin was done in 1996, more on: http://architectuul.com/architecture/hamburger-bahnhof-1997

[6] The book Phenomenology of Perception was published in 1945 in French and it was issued in English version in 1962

[7] Summarization of Korbička´s Dance Calligraphy by Miroslav Petříček available on: https://flashart.cz/2018/03/11/pavel-korbicka/

[8] The video of Korbička´s Blue way available on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq-SM0FjWBc

[9] The layout of the exhibition in with a spiral form in the gallery space is visible on gallery’s website: https://artalkweb.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/tz-pavel-korbicka-2/

[10] Korbička´s proposal for 56th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art is visible on: http://www.korbicka.cz/projects.php

[11] Korbička´s exhibition Deflection in the Brno House of Arts in 2019 visible on: https://www.dum-umeni.cz/en/deflection/t5684

[12] Marcel Duchamp´s Disks Bearing Spirals visible on: https://www.wikiart.org/en/marcel-duchamp/disks-bearing-spirals-1923

[13] M.C. Escher, Spirals visible on: https://arthive.com/escher/works/200231~Spirals

[14] The artpiece Window or Wall Sign by Bruce Nauman from 1967 bears the written statement: ´The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths´, sea also an essay by Jp McMahon on: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-1010/conceptual-and-performance-art/conceptual-performance/a/nauman-the-true-artist-helps-the-world-by-revealing-mystic-truths

[18] The book Mazes and Labyrinths: A General Account of their History and Development is available on: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/mazes-and-labyrinths-1922

[19] Miró´s Labyrinth at the Fondation Maeght is described on the foundation webpage: https://www.fondation-maeght.com/labyrinthe-miro/

[20] More pictures of the mosaic labyrinth in the church of San Vitale in Ravena can be found on: https://www.luc.edu/medieval/labyrinths/ravenna.shtml

[21] More on Mark Wallinger underground Labyrinths can be read on: https://art.tfl.gov.uk/labyrinth/about/

[22] Grütter also explains: If all wavelengths are reflected at equal strength, we see white. p. 322

[23] The essey Art and Objecthood can be seen on: http://theoria.art-zoo.com/art-and-objecthood-michael-fried/

[24] Zevi´s book Saper vedere l´architettura was originally published in Italian in 1948 and was translated to English by Milton Gendel in 1957.

[25] More about Tugendhat´s villa on: https://www.tugendhat.eu/en/o-dome/dum/

[26] Ponty´s book was originally published in French in 1945 as Phénoménologie de la perception and was translated to English by Colin Smith in 1962.

[27] E.g., during 1920s Czech artist Zdeněk Pešánek made his Spectrophone (a colour piano where music keyboard is connected to the lights) and visitors are involved in the artpiece, more on: https://monoskop.org/Zden%C4%9Bk_Pe%C5%A1%C3%A1nek

[28] See the book Zvuky, kódy, obrazy = Sounds, codes, images by editors Jitka Hlaváčková and Miloš Vojtěchovský, Praha: ArtMap, 2020, which is based on the exhibition Sounds / Codes / Images

Audio Experimentation in the Visual Arts held in Prague City Gallery in 2019 and which discuss the connection of visual art and sound experiments in the 20th century up to now.  

References

Arnheim, Rudolf. 1997. Art and Visual Perception: A Psychology of the Creative Eye. Los Angeles: University of California Press.

Cook, John, and Heinrich Klotz. 1973. Conversations with architects: Philip Johnson, Kevin Roche, Paul Rudolph, Bertrand Goldberg, Morris Lapidus, Louis Kahn, Charles Moore, Robert Venturi & Denise Scott Brown. 1st Edition. New York: Prager Publishers.

Fried, Michael. 1967. "Art and objecthood". Artforum.

Grütter, Jörg Kurt. 2015. Basics of Perception in Architecture. First. Bern: Springer Vieweg.

Higgins, Charlotte. 2018. Red Thread: On Mazes and Labyrinths. First. London: Vintage.

Kesner, Ladislav, and Mira Macík, Sylvie Ficová. 2021. Pavel Korbička: Space of Perception: Telegraph Gallery Guide 1. První. Olomouc: JUDr. Robert Runták, Telegraph Gallery.

Marinković, Slobodan, Predrag Stanković, Mile Štrbac, Irina Tomić, and Mila Ćetković. 2012. "Cochlea and other spiral forms in nature and art". American Journal of Otolaryngology 33 (1): 80-87.

Matthews, William. 1922. Mazes and Labyrinths: A general account of their history and developments. London: Longsman, Green and co.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Colin Smith. 2005. Phenomenology of perception. International library of philosophy and scientific method. London: Taylor and Francis.

Pospiszyl, Tomáš. 1998. Před obrazem: antologie americké výtvarné teorie a kritiky. 1. vyd. Eseje (Občanské sdružení pro podporu výtvarného umění). Praha: OSVU.

Víchová, Ilona. 2020. "Umělé světlo v umění". Dizertační práce, Univerzita Karlova, Filozofická fakulta, Ústav pro dějiny umění.

Zevi, Bruno, Milton Gendel. 1993. Architecture as space: How to look at architecture. First. New York: De Capo Press, Inc.

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