BIBLIOGRAPHY

• Jana Doležalová

  Who should a memorial created for the public urban space be dedicated to? Have there been individuals among us worthy of such honor? Will the deeds of the immortalized personalities or selected topics still concern the society after a few years or decades? Should not statues and monuments be placed in public space only temporarily? Why does the form of most of the current proposals goes back to few (dozen) years ago? What is the “present form” of monumental work and what should it look like? These are the questions we usually ask when reflecting on the form and shaping of contemporary urban landscape. They pop to our minds when we read the conditions of the contest for a statue of Maria Theresa and Sophie Chotek, when in our neighborhood we bump into the “botched up Amadeus” or a street-art implementation ordered by the town hall.

  These questions also inspired the creation of the exhibition The Man Without the Rhino by Jana Doležalová (*1981), a graduate of the Studio of Monumental Sculpture at the Prague Academy. The installation created for the Olomouc gallery showcase Deniska brings the author’s reflections on the function, ideological content, form and impact of sculptures in public space together with topics that she continuously develops in her work. For a long time, she has been dealing mainly with the relationship between man and nature and the position of the individual within the community. Doležalová decided to use the space of a glass showcase for a memorial dedicated to the Western rhinoceros, a species that was declared extinct by the IUCN last year. She assembled her installation from several components. On a slender pedestal, she put a small object, the silhouette of which resembles two horns typical for this species of rhinoceros. It was hunting for their horns, widely used — even without any evidence of its positive effects in modern science — in traditional Chinese medicine, that caused the extinction of rhinos in their home environment. Few of us realize, however, that the wipeout of the Western rhinoceros does not only mean losing a particular species, but also disruption of the delicate balance in the whole ecosystem. This fact was made the main message of the installation. An object referring to it was a tiny statuette of an oxpecker, a bird living in symbiosis with large African mammals, as well as some watercolor paintings forming a background of the object. The colors of these small sketches evoke the atmosphere of Savannah. Above it hovers a flock of birds changing its shape. The flocks symbolize variability and the ability of the community to modify, as well as the function of an individual in it. However, they also may represent clouds of ash swirling over a scorched ground and to point at irreversibility of some human actions and at the precarious balance of nature.

   

  The instability of ecosystem and the negative impact human activities have on it has become the central theme of Jana Doležalová’s participation at a group exhibition called Exposition at the Jelení Gallery. Using three different media, she has tried to interpret her idea of the biological theory of ecological niche and related concepts. She imagines an ecological niche as a space that can be taken by a living organism without being in any way restricted, where it can operate without any interference or confinements. However, this term refers to the ideal state of affairs. The imaginary space actually occupied by a population of a species in the ecosystem is what biologists call a realized niche. It depends on the presence of other organisms, especially related species. When there are organisms with similar needs in the same environment, their niches overlap. These species must negotiate their requirements to eliminate the negative effects of “competition”. However, if any of the animal species become extinct, it leaves an empty niche behind. In the best case, it is filled with other species with similar needs, at worst it leads to an irrevocable disturbance of relationships between different species, which may result in serious consequences for the entire ecosystem. The consequence of extermination of the wolf is the overpopulation of deer. The role of the predator has to be substituted by man-hunter. Man’s irresponsible behavior becomes a driving force that disrupts the fragile stability and tips the scale.

   

  Doležalová has conveyed a sense of instability and endangerment by her installation called simply Ecological Niche (2014). She placed two museum pedestals against one another and put massive wedges underneath them in an attempt to unbalance their bearing surfaces to the maximum extent possible. On one of the inclined planes, she placed pieces of torn watercolor depicting swirling flocks of birds, while on the other one she spread all sorts of other natural materials such as feathers, pieces of bark, piles of seeds and stones she collects on the places where she walks. By looking at the installation, the viewer was attacked by the feeling that the slightest gust of wind would scatter the pieces around the room, that even the slightest movement would cause a collapse, chaos in the established order. A single gesture can have irreversible consequences. Jana Doležalová tried to illustrate this with her next work – the performance An Empty Niche (2014). At the exhibition, it is documented only with a photograph depicting the artist at the moment where, in the middle of a museum exhibition, she touches the nose of a stuffed Thylacine. This simple gesture paraphrases one of the most famous works in art history – a scene from Michelangelo’s ceiling fresco in the Sistine Chapel depicting a moment in which God brings Adam to life by his touch. Rather than the creative power of man, however, the author here refers to his destructive abilities. She concluded her presentation in the Jelení Gallery with a video called Niches Overlapping (2014) accompanied by an audio recording called The Fundamental Niche (2014). The visually impressive collage assembled from footage of collected natural materials and sequences cut out from the records documenting the partial performance involved a simple animation – a visually ambiguous graphic symbol of two overlapping ellipses, two sets representing intersecting niches.

  In the Exposition exhibition, curator Tereza Jindrová focuses primarily on the idea of collecting. On the work of the three artists represented she has demonstrated collecting and musealization as a method, as “one of the peculiar features of contemporary art.” However, Jana Doležalová’s contribution to the exhibition as well as her work in general do not exemplify this phenomenon. She does have a need to collect natural materials, but she does not present the collected objects superficially as her intimate collection of bizarre fetishes. On the contrary, she shows unusual sensitivity when incorporating them into her installations and multi-layered objects, where each object has its own meaning and becomes an integral part of the whole story.

  Jana Doležalová’s works presented in the Olomouc Deniska Gallery and Jelení Gallery document the artist’s way of working, which in the past two years – perhaps due to the lack of free time – she has applied in making videos as well as in the creation of objects and spatial installations. She also used the principle of creating an artwork from sub-elements in the installation Phoenix (2013) realized for the exhibition Changing Society in the Ashes of the Phoenix. As part of the installation and the exhibition as a whole, she made use of a legend of the mythological bird Phoenix, which passes, like human communities, through periodic cycles of destruction and resurrection. In the exhibition area of ​​Brno Youth Gallery, Doležalová leaned against the wall two structures made of wooden slats, which look like spread wings of two birds – an eagle and a heron, which represent two of the many forms of the mythical Phoenix, as well as two phases of its flight on its way between birth and death. On the wings, the artist also placed natural materials and small objects made from recycled materials. They exist independently and tell their own story, which is part of a larger whole and forms the message of the installation.

  However, for the author these objects also represent fragments of a disturbed ecosystem, traces of fatal mistakes – partial errors leading to disaster. Attentive viewers will not miss that they are also fragments of the author’s earlier works. Once again, we encounter the motif of the flock together with issues relating to the status and responsibilities of individuals within the community. A report on disappearance is given by the painting of the western capercaillie referring to earlier performances dealing with the extinction of animal species. Interconnectedness – most often interconnectedness of relations in nature or in the ecosystem, or within the community – is not only an important topic for Doležalová. On the Phoenix installation, we can, more clearly than anywhere else, watch the content elements of her works interlace and complement one another and one idea build on another. However, Jana Doležalová does not take detours to get to the core of her message. She bases her performances on simple gestures and uses simple means of creating objects and installations, as for her it is through simple forms that messages become absolute. Despite this fact, or perhaps because of it, her works stand out thanks to their specific and very compelling imagery. But they also attract the viewer by the urgency of their message. The artist’s active human approach makes an urgent but non-violent appeal to the viewer. Using the situation, she is trying to change the standard.

   Nina Michlovská, professional journal Prostor - Zlín 3/2014