Jan Wojnar

Text is photographed in parts, so that in the aggregate of photographs the entire studied text is captured. During the processing of positives the sequence and orientation of the shots is preserved. No cropping is performed.

studie textu

Study of text, 1985, b&w photographs, 7 pieces

Třinec resident Jan Wojnar – the dictionary definition of a visual poet – creator of images, objects, conceptual works, photographic series, photograms and books. Jiří Valoch considers Wojnar to be the “most radical conceptualist in the Czech Republic”. Třinec is specifically mentioned as both his greatest fortune and curse – this “reclusion” allowed him, on the one hand, to develop an original solution to a key problem of fine art in the second half of the 20th century and to create unusually noteworthy work, while on the other hand did not support him in his work becoming known among a wider public.

Wonjnar has used several methods for his photography – from the start of the 70s it has primarily been a matter of collage: found, often very banal reproductions serve as starting material for some of the artist’s poems (Mřížkové básně [Grid Poems]) and artistic books. Of course, in terms of the history of photography, the systematic consideration of the properties of photographs (and in the autophotograms even of the properties of photosensitive paper) as media is more important. “A photograph is only a different semantic means, but my thoughts about it are, even while working with it, still the same. Every medium, you see, allows the realisation of something that cannot be applied in others. Photographs gave me the possibility of, among other things, visualising temporailty and associated movement.” (Being in concord with the construction of the Universe. Interview of M. Mikolášek with J. W., Protimluv, 2004, No. 2, pp 26–27.)

From Wojnar’s work in which he has utilised photography we introduce works from the Dva druhy záznamu (Two types of records) series, a series of diagrams based on several photographs, several points is transposed into a planar sketched diagram, and finally records of photographic events. Wojnar’s photographic series are created by an original contribution to photo-conceptual and postminimalistic discussions which took place primarily in the 1970s. His works may be seen as the climax of an analytical approach to photography, investigating questions of chance, the limits of photographic equipment and the creation of records. Even in his case it is possible to show that the much prized neutrality of conceptual photography is imaginary – despite the mathematical precision of maintaining previously set concepts, the appearance of the records (A4 format, several glued black and white photographs and concise text written on a typewriter – a technical description of the event that has taken place), even an effort to maximise the de-aestheticisation of the whole tone stands somewhere at the beginning of a very subjective decision, a gesture of the mind to carry a certain thing out in a certain way.

– Helena Musilová

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