Fotograf Magazine

9 June — 8 July, 2017

The Fotograf Gallery symbolically ceased its activities at 28 Školská Street with an exhibition by one of its founders – Tomáš Hrůza. Its title – Uncertain Unfolding – was rather significant and posed an unanswerable question. Hrůza’s photographs and videos are often inspired by natural elements seen not only as essential manifestations of nature but also as the basis for human existence. Their presentation at the Fotograf Gallery exhibition, however, did not take on a stormy form, but rather a hypnotic, meditative one. Hrůza describes his exhibited (mostly large-format) works as landscape situations, where the repetitive fine records of movement may be also seen as renderings of human emotions and mental states. At the same time, they point to the Sisyphean struggle with nature when people in the role of bitter janitors build dams and ships or wrap stacks of straw into tarpaulin to prevent the constant expansion of natural forces and elements. Nature is often regarded as destructive, cruel, hostile and constantly penetrating the places where it “does not belong”. But Hrůza does not see nature as something inappropriate; on the contrary, he finds a common ground with it. He does not cut his way through an impenetrable forest; he does, however, hold the elements as captives – letting the water or wind do their thing, settling among them, finding himself on the wild sea, and then disappearing again at the foothills of the Bohemian Forest. Then he brings the records of these empathetic meetings to galleries, offering the visitors a chance to take part in the harmony (at least briefly).

Tereza Špinková