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  Crime Scene | 2013

The relationship between the place and the action is for the work of Jakub Tomáš /1982/ essential. We can feel this relationship in the old series of work which employ the cinema as the place emptied of people but which refers to the stories of the viewers as well as the stories of the films. This relationship is obvious in the figural scenes that he used to fill his circular and elliptical paintings with. His formally straightforward and vivid attitude towards painting with a generous size of painting takes the viewer straight into the action and the place.   The requirement to work on paper or with paper lead Jakub Tomáš to radically reduce the format size and to engage  the installation of the work with the whole visual impression. Thematically he is still working with the already mentioned relationship between place – action – viewer. The initial inspiration source for this new series of work where austere descriptions of actual crime scenes. Therefore an interesting conflict was developed. If Jakub Tomáš subjectively colors the depersonalized description, is it possible that the subjective result can visually meet the objective source? It would be very interesting to compare the author‘s work with the photographs of the actual places.   Jakub Tomáš, apparently lead by the media of paper, used a very simple technique to redraw the description of a place. Every crime scene was unfolded into a number of layers from which some of them are treated spatially. The layers that are used can also be perceived as the unfolded layers of a painting. The fundamental drawing is affected by colored or cut-out sheets. In some cases the color of the sheet affects the mood, in other case the overlaid textures evoke movement.  The crime scenes are then more defined but also more hidden. Only the spectator’s point of view influences if the crime scene will open up or will stay hidden. The investigation is thus very dramatic. It appears as the work for the exhibition was site specific to the space of the k.art.on gallery. The spectator is anyway forced to walk through the narrow gallery and change his point of view.   Jakub Tomáš was certainly dealing with complex adjustment and the complexity of installation of multiple papers and sheets on top of each other. It lead him to use wooden board as the load bearing mats, clips and clamps. Because of the ratio of the size of the actual work and the size of the system of suspension, it is impossible not to notice the individual parts. The postmodern emphasis on the technical elements almost evokes The Centre Pompidou and its exposed intestines.   /Šárka Koudelková/