Fotograf Magazine

5 May — 3 June, 2017

Two large-format black and white photographs on a barium surface, an object comprised of hollow porous concrete shaped bricks surrounded by a sharp, two-centimetre wide line of tarmac. This is a simple list of what actually is the Untitled exhibition and a list of terms which Rudolf Skopec takes into account and works with intentionally (with a clear definition).

Photography is not an invisible substance which mirrors actual objects. It is an object itself. Photographic “plates” are stacked, overlapping and colliding with each other, to accomplish the construction plan and the specific plan view. The image itself captures the artefacts of the reinforced concrete beams of a monumental building. Thus, the photographic material and its structure change in the construction material of a new imaginary architecture that is both a binding agent and an anchor element of the constructed object and its physical form.

We stand in front of building material which is a framed image, the image being the object. We stand in front of a drawing, a model, a futuristic object of a new life or an Olympic monument of a collapsing economy.

The entire gallery space is filled with an Ouroboros system – where the construction overcomes its tangible shadow and the surfaces pierce each other and move to new positions and dimensions; where an object comprised of hollow, porous concrete shaped bricks surrounded by a sharp, two-centimetre wide line of tarmac and two large-format black and white photographs on a barium surface can be found.

I recall a picture I took during the exhibition preview. Rudolf Skopec is standing in the middle of the gallery, slightly bent, his hands clenched at his face level. It is a dance, a fall, a spasm. A figure between the matter, the structure, the significance, and the inevitable collapse.

Ladislav Vondrák