ARTIST STATEMENT

• Sum up the main character of your work, your long-term interests, and themes.

Samohejl classifies his works as “sculptural situations.” As opposed to installations, his works are moreso experiences than presentations, drawing their strength from an active audience and oftentimes incorporating audience interaction. Samohejl’s work is not restricted to any one medium or material – instead the medium and material are specific to the concept and space he is working with.

 In the past, Samohejl has worked with concrete, found materials, and 3D-printed objects, among others. He has worked in a wide variety of disciplines, including video, performance, and drawing. Samohejl frequently draws processes and aesthetics from design and architecture. He is concerned with the present and future, particularly dealing with issues of technology, urbanism, and mass consumption. He is most interested in the physical and mental impact of these systems on the individual.

Samohejl’s works reveal to us what goes unseen. They reveal what we take for granted: the systems that shape our lives, and yet are too large and complex to question. His situations disrupt our habits, thus illuminating and creating space to question them. In recent years, Samohejl has created “natural virtual realities,” using low-tech materials to speak about problems of high-tech. He often employs humor as a method of disruption. The unexpected size and construction of his works may undermine the context that a viewer might rely on to understand the work, thus liberating their relationship to it.

The core of Samohejl’s current work can be found in the human obsession with an abstract future and the obsessive desire to project itself onto this imagined existence.

• Describe the context of your work – what are your inspirational sources and theoretical starting points, which artists and tendencies do you consider as referential to your work.

My inspirational source is the world I am inhabiting.

My work functions as interface for ideas that I am concerned about.

They reach their state by exhibiting. Than they become ballast that I have learn how to live with, get rid of, or some in between relationship.

Tendencies: Today I consider referential to my work Denis Johnson and Tom Morello. Since long I love Suicidal Tendencies: Institutionalized (1983)

• Try to characterize what makes your work specific, wherein lies its force, what makes it different from the work of artists with similar approaches and themes.

I guess what makes my work specific is the fact that it is unapologetically authentic.

 Its force lies in the search of outside of the norm ways of expressions often mimicking as traditional. My work is coming from certain necessity of expression. What my works has in common is my deep interest in reality, and what is happening with that concept when confronted with computation. Specifically how do we navigate, explore or experience the space under those new conditions. My work functions as interface for ideas that I am concerned about. That notion of interface by the way leads towards provisory vocabulary describing my works as sculptural situations. As the categories that we subscribe to existing art objects, situations installations are not fitting anymore for my works.

I understand sculpture as whole to be the most suitable form of data storage. I was working a lot with the notion of public monument in the past so it was for me smooth transition into computational thinking because the attitude used for such places was similar. In that sense we could speak about sculpture as our connection with past, as well as any other data driven machine. Its static presence in space is not enough of course as there are other elements in play. In my work I personally prefer interaction that is a choice of the spectator. Not something that is forced or demanded by the situation itself. This passive quality can be described as a traditional printed book, which you know what to do with to enjoy it. It is there but waiting for you to ¨be opened and hence being activated¨ (clearly some of the books doesn’t want that and doing everything to scare everyone who tries to read them, in terms of graphic design or chosen language). Also if you try to think not in the traditional linear way, you get pretty soon to a diverse space that can remind you a labyrinth. That depends also how close you are trying to look. We could call it Scale Problem which is further connected with the amount of your engagement. From there the idea of movement kind of evolve naturally.

I think my work is different from other artists with similar themes because I use traditional form in order to speak about the shared space in its broadest sense (including virtual). For me it became clear very early that to use tools that are derivated from digital are conceptually missleading.

I am convinced that there is real potential within physical form if enriched with digital mindset. This try to articulate unimaginable by using digital thinking in physical space is changing the perspective of how to look at the virtual and how it is composed as well.

• What is your work process like? Do you deal with preparation and research? How do you search for your themes? How do you choose the media you work in?

My work process is usually I need to make an artwork in order to understand or experience something. When the work is done, I like to spend some time with it.

I try to have the research time/energy equal to the actual production of the work. 

I usually live within the research process. My artistic practice that I do without having a studio (post studio? Don’t know the name). This feeling of studio-less is accompanying me since my studies, and I was comfortable for a long time. I love the freedom I can enjoy when not bound to certain space and certain set of tools. It is the best spot for reactive observer..

• What is your vision for the future? How do you want to develop your work and continue your previous projects/realizations? What is your long-term goal/dream?

My vision is that we have to imagine a way how to share this world.

I try to minimize my virtual presence as much as possible. Currently I am looking for other ways how to present my work processes.

My dream and long-time goal is to do what I love as long as I have the energy to do it.

Thank you for reading up to here