Head Lamp - Lamp Head 1967

This is Mikuláš Medek's "Head Lamp - Lamp Head," and it's like a puzzle box of paint, with no date to pin it down. The painting has such a haunting presence, a blue and red stare that pulls you right in. There's something almost technological about it, like an early image of an AI! I’m drawn to the way the blue paint is scratched and scraped across the surface, revealing layers beneath. It’s as if Medek was excavating the image, digging into its core. Look at those vertical blue lines, almost like conduits or power lines, that seem to conduct the eye downward. The way he builds up and breaks down the image, there is a real push and pull between abstraction and representation, an ongoing experiment. It reminds me a little of Philip Guston's later works, where the cartoonish and the serious collide! It's a reminder that art is never really finished, just abandoned at some point, full of open questions.