Fotograf Magazine

The exhibition called The Impossibility of Jumping over a Plate presented a collection of photographs to which one succumbed such as one succumbs to a conjurer’s tricks. Silvie Milková drew the gallery visitor into a game similar to the games an illusionist plays with his audience. Against the interior backdrop she built improvised stage sets dominated by cheap props. In vain the viewer waited suspended in a noir atmosphere for a miracle that would never come, as he or she knew. Which seemed one more reason to wait endlessly.

The exhibition consisted of black-and-white photographs of varying sizes whose placement on the walls communicated markedly with the space of the gallery. In some places, the photographs connected and unfolded the walls of the exhibition space; at one spot they replaced the whole side of the gallery and created an imaginary continuation of the space. The photo display was complemented with a video projection, at first seemingly hidden and discovered by the attentive viewer thanks to the playing sound track.

The boundary between reality and illusion became as permeable as during an illusionist’s performance. Photography’s ability to capture reality truthfully had been misappropriated and gradually disappeared. Dream reality fused with everyday reality, illusion became real. Consciousness blended with the unconscious, the real with the virtual, real life with a second life, one’s personality with an avatar. The difference between the true miracle and an anticipated visual legerdemain of an illusionist dissipated.

Filip Láb