In his latest series of works, Radek Brousil, returns to painting while simultaneously remaining faithful to his photographic past. Brousil defines social, cultural, and environmental problems using unexpected interpretations and terminology, choosing instead to examine these issues on a symbolic, personal, and emotional level. He combines reflections on chronopolitics (the politics of time) and memory with self-referential themes. By referring to chronopolitics and selecting images from his own archives, the artist reflects on photography itself and the connection between conceptualism and the image, as well as between the conscious and unconscious mind.
Each element of the black oil paintings on jute is a carefully chosen reference to politics or personal and collective memory. These works also question the memory of the material and medium of photography. The artist creates a unique connection between oil underpainting and image transfers, including details of clock hands sourced mainly from the facades of churches.
This body of work began during the artist’s residency in New York, where the damaged, often bizarre, or completely non-functioning clocks Brousil observed, were mostly located in public spaces—on the clock towers of churches, synagogues, city halls, and other symbols of political power. Once functional in the city for practical purposes, these clocks today serve more as vestiges of history and decorative elements of old architecture, often being restored anew. For the artist, these clocks are a tool to tell the story of our relationship with the rules of time.
In this series, there are 25 large works—one more than the usual 24 hours on a clock (in contrast to the 12-hour US time format)—which form a complete whole. Each work features a photographic transfer in a different position, freely referring to the rhythm of counterclockwise movement. Dark, empty, and raw, surfaces allude to the theory of black holes—a symbolic beginning and, at the same time, infinity—as well as the idea of invisibility. Some photographic transfers are more precise, revealing structures or specific clockwork elements, while others take on a more abstract and organic direction. The series is also accompanied by works in a detailed format, where the entire surface of smaller canvases becomes a dialogue between the painting and photographic layers, leaving no empty space. Smaller paintings on jute, with global underpainting and photo transfers, will be exhibited in the shape of a clock. Additionally, we include two framed works on regular linen canvas, in which the artist experiments with free painting gestures that respond to the photographs, extending the real world into the subconscious.
Referring to the deconstruction of time, Brousil’s photographic transfers—poetic archives of the subconscious—fuse with the conscious narrative of images that follow a counter clockwise direction. Through subtly employed symbols of fallen regimes, the project brings us closer to fleeting occurrences and reflections on the consequences of human behavior, such as hidden racism, escapism, or the pressure to conform to the universal cycles of life in a patriarchal society. Jute bags for preserving, ropes and clocks for measuring, and architectural elements for subconsciously tracking traces of human history and power.
text: Natalia Barczynska
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Radek Brousil is a Czech artist based in Prague. He works with textiles, alongside ceramics, film, photography and video. His themes address social testimony, presenting an activist expression on an uncertain future. Brousil defines social, cultural and environmental problems using unexpected interpretations and terminology, and chooses rather to look at these issues on a symbolic, personal and emotional level.