ARTIST STATEMENT

EN

My work is an attempt to reconcile the earnest search for the absolute from before the Great War with the subsequent cynicism and later flippancy of aesthetic trends.

I revisit the language of early Modernism to interrogate the past, primitivism, civilisation and mythology. My practice makes reference to the work and ideas of early 20th century avant-garde artists, their visual and verbal rhetoric of destructive purification, and their exhilaration in irrevocable, violent shifts in the social, political and aesthetic status quos. I suggest the early Modernist art canon could be of questionable morality; the rampant individualist face of totalitarian mass ideologies; and a distant well from which spring both the pleasures and anxieties of today’s modernities. My work engages with traditional methods such as painting, woodcarving and poetry, but also digital print, to forge an artistic language whose forms are seemingly extremely traditional, but also ambiguous and problematic. I draw upon ideologies of power, and their interweaving with the idea of the heroic physical body. I employ a perverse and sometimes monumental grammar of the defunct language of post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism and Cubism, spliced with comic book culture, video games and our present condition, with its reference to both myths of the Modernist canon and the folk art from which it drew many of its forms.

SK

Moja práca je pokusom o zmierenie  úprimného hľadania absolútneho v umení spred Prvej svetovej vojny, s následným cynizmom a neskôr frivolnosťou estetických trendov.

Vraciam sa k jazyku raného modernizmu, aby som spytoval minulosť, primitivizmus, civilizáciu a mytológiu. Moje práce odkazujú na dielo a myšlienky avantgardných umelcov raného 20. storočia,  na ich vizuálnu a verbálnu rétoriku deštruktívneho očistenia, ako aj na ich eufóriu nad neodvolateľnými, násilnými zmenami v sociálnom, politickom i estetickom status quo. Naznačujem, že raný modernistický umelecký kánon mal možno pochybnú morálku, zúrivú individualistickú tvár totalitných masových ideológií, ako aj vzdialenú studňu, z ktorej vytryskli radosti i úzkosti dnešných modernít. Vo svojej práci využívam tradičné metódy ako maľba, drevorezba a poézia, ale aj digitálnu tlač, a tak kujem výtvarný jazyk, formy ktorého sa zdajú byť mimoriadne tradičné, no  zároveň mnohoznačné a problematické. Vyberám si z ideológií moci a ich prepletenie s predstavou heroického fyzického tela. Používam nekalú a niekedy monumentálnu poetiku vymretých jazykov post-impresionizmu, fauvizmu, expresionizmu a kubizmu, a splietam ich s komickou knižnou kultúrou, videohrami a naším súčasným stavom, s odkazmi na mýty modernistického kánonu a ľudovej umeleckej formy, z ktorých odvodila mnohé svoje formy.

BIOGRAPHY

Miroslav Pomichal

CV

Personal Details/Osobne udaje

Born/Narodeny: 22 July 1984, Bratislava

Email: mpomichal@hotmail.com

Selected Exhibitions/Vybrane vystavy:

2016:    Miroslav Pomichal: Kaukazske Malovanky, Flatgallery, Bratislava

2016:    DHF1: Delta House Gallery, London

2016:    RBA Rome Scholarship Shortlist, Lloyd’s Register, London

2016:   Not all Contemporary Art is Rubbish, Lightbox Gallery and Museum, Woking

2015:   IF IT BENDS IT’S FUNNY (if it breaks it’s not funny), Copeland Park (Bosse & Baum), London

2015:    Bodies!, Ingram Collection of Modern British and Contemporary Art, Lightbox Museum and Gallery, Woking

2015:    Super Prime, London, with Pitiful Investment Group

2015:    The Sky Was, Rum Factory, London

2015:    Avenge, Nice Gallery, London

2015:   Art15, with UAL Now (Formerly Futuremaps), London

2015:    #join the revolution, Delta House Gallery, London

2015:   Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Newlyn Art Gallery, Newlyn, Cornwall

2015:   Demimonde, with Slate Projects and Mottahedan Projects, Amberwood House, London

2014:   Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London

2014:   Saatchi New Sensations 2014, Victoria House, London

2014:   Miroslav Pomichal: The Foolish Virgins, Nice Gallery, London

2014:   Ship of State, Slovak Embassy, London

2014:   Bloomberg New Contemporaries, World Museum, Liverpool

2014:   MFA Fine Art Degree Show, London

2014:   PARK14, Cannizaro Park, London

2013:   Threads, Rag Factory, London

2013:   Spaced Out, Wimbledon Space, Wimbledon College of Art

2012:   Craftwork, Project Space, Wimbledon College of Art

       

Education/Vzdelanie

 09/2012 – 09/2014: MFA Fine Art (Distinction): Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London

 09/2002 – 07/2005: Art History BA (First Class Honours): Courtauld Institute of Art, London