Velká Iviška 1970

Editor: Here we have Mikuláš Medek's "Velká Iviška," created in 1970 using acrylic paint. It feels like staring into some strange, otherworldly furnace...the colors and shapes create such a bizarrely compelling tension. What do you make of it? Curator: Bizarrely compelling...yes! I love that. It’s almost like a visual scream, isn't it? I see a confrontation with the void, framed by what appears to be the cold architecture of… well, who knows? A temple? A bunker? But look closer, at how the textures evoke aging walls, as though this is the architecture of the unconscious slowly collapsing in on itself. I wonder what anxieties, cultural or personal, Medek might have been processing there? Editor: It's interesting that you see collapse; to me, the geometry suggests more a controlled experiment, like a scientist peering into a bizarre, contained reality. Do you think the matter-painting style lends itself more towards decay, rather than control? Curator: Ah, excellent counterpoint! Control *is* in evidence here: the architecture, geometric motifs, a composition seemingly dictated by ritual—almost hermetic. Perhaps a self-fashioned psychic laboratory, built to stare down, and contain, whatever that screaming void is! Don't you feel the pull of that black, empty core? Editor: I do! The conversation between that void and the sort of… insistent geometry keeps me curious. I had originally glossed over that tension as simply bizarre, but now, that feels simplistic. Curator: Exactly! Never trust the surface. Always remember that artworks worth their salt pull us into the in-between, don't you think? Where questions begin.