IMAGES

STATEMENT (on LOCUS)

Project for the Vision Gallery in Tokio

The work of Jan Mladovsky can be broadly described as an investigation - in various forms - of means of communication, how messages and signs reveal as well as conceal their true meaning and what has been wittingly or unwittingly left out either by their seders or recipients.

STATEMENT (on the works)

Melody Spirit

Despite the geographical distance, the Japanese and British cultures can demonstrate certain parallels, which are the subject of the piece. They are both island cultures distinct from but influenced by their bigger mainland neighbours, China and the Continental Europe. The complex historical relationships with the mainlands, marked by tensions and contradictions, resulted in attempts to expand and control overseas territories.
Both cultures are invariably intertwined with the respective imperial projects of their recent past. These came to an abrupt halt at the end of the Second World War, in which both countries played a central role with great sacrifices. Despite being on the opposite sides of the conflict, both lost their empires, and their international influence and power, as the direct result of the new post-war American ascendancy.
After the war, both countries kept their dynastic royal families, together with other nostalgic symbols of the bygone age. Good examples of parallel sentiments are the verses of the current national hymns with a very similar content:

May the Emperor's rule last
Till a thousand years,
Then eight thousand years to come
Till sand, pebbles, and rocks
To be united as a ledge
Till moss grows on it

God save our gracious Queen,
Long live our noble Queen,
God save the Queen:
Send her victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us:
God save the Queen.

At the same time, in order to rebuild their economies, to regain prestige and to modernise, Japan and Britain discarded the former imperial ambitions and substituted them by close economic and cultural links with the new world power, the United States of America, embracing its version of consumer society. Both countries have remained the principal allies and protagonists of the US.

The video installation

The installation consists of two video projection screens, facing each other. In The Spirit, on one screen the camera, focussed on a tiny portion of a hugely magnified American one-dollar bill, scans the filigree patterns of the printed security ornaments in a repeated parallel-line motion from left to right and back again, across the full length of the banknote. Starting at the top left corner and gradually making its way down. Each pass takes twenty seconds, while the whole scan lasts eighteen minutes.
Although the scanning movement is rhythmically regular, the moving pattern of the filigree lines is ever changing because the camera never passes twice over the same spot of the banknote.
In Melody Spirit, on the opposite screen a violoncello player, as if trying to interpret the visual score of the changing patterns of the dollar bill, is repeatedly improvising each time a slightly differently the British “God Save the Queen” and the Japanese “May the Emperor's Rule Last”. The corresponding texts of the hymns are alternating in English and Japanese across the screen. He is clearly a very good cellist. Dressed in black, he is playing with a professional authority and concentration. Half way through he appears naked. Hiding behind the instrument, his interpretation is now more vulnerable but with greater depth and imagination.

After the camera finishes scanning the bill, it zooms on the eye of the pyramid and the adjacent Latin text that may be translated as “New World Order”, before passing onto the word GOD then revealing IN GOD WE TRUST. The cello player stops playing and gets up. The installation is looped. The viewer will be invited to sing-along or not, depending how inspired he/she may feel by the cellist’s performance.
Using the insignia of state power and national identity of the American banknote, with the popular British and Japanese national hymn tunes, locked in a time sequence by a mesmeric camera movement, the piece attempts to search for the true meaning of the revealed symbolism.
It is trying to address some parts of the complex social-political history of the developed and democratic West, born out of the most violent conflict in the history of mankind, and its lingering desire for the control of the world order, which many in the developing East and South view with deep suspicion.
It also deals with the symbolic language of state power and its appetite for claiming legitimacy through appropriation of cultural and religious signs. The pice can therefore be also interpreted as trying to rescue the original quality of the music, as well as the graphic elegance of the dollar bill - the source of the popular myth about it’s true meaning.

BIOGRAPHY

1965-68

studied at the Academy of Applied Art, Prague

1968-70

studied at the Slade School of Art, University College London

studied postgraduate at the Slade School of Art, University
College London

1976-77

studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan

Selected Solo EXHIBITION

1974

Grabowski Gallery, London

1977

Studio Marconi, Milan

1978

Galerie Ilanne, Paris

1979

Galerie UXA, Novara, Italy

1980

Galerie UXA, Novara, Italy

1981

Basement Group, Newcastle upon Tyne
Spectro Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne

Selected Group EXHIBITION

1977

“Pratica Milano”
Studio Marconi, Milan

1980

“Actions”,
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham

1981

“Aljorfe Barrocco”
Palazzo Dante, Noto, Sicily
Lisson Gallery, London
Serpentine Gallery, London

1982

“Art and Sea”
John Hansard Gallery, Southampton
ICA, London
Sunderland Art Centre

1984

“1984”,
Camden Arts Centre, London

1986

The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS - selection

British Council, London

London Borough of Camden, London

Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany

Stadt Duisburg, Germany

PUBLICATIONS

2001

MAGNET by Jan Mladovsky, G plus G Publishers, Novemner

2003

BILKA, Catalogue

Selected BIBLIOGRAPHY

1974

Chris Fox, “Jan Mladovsky”, in: Studio International, London

1977

Gillo Dorfles, “Jan Mladovsky”, in: catalogue, Studio Marconi, Milan

1982

William Varley, “Mladovsky”, in: The Guardian, 15 April

1982

Phillip George, “Jan Mladovsky”, in: The Guardian, 25 May

1982

Lewis Biggs, “Jan Mladovsky - Tomorrow”, in: Arnolfini Review, Bristiol

1983

Helga Jˆrgens, “Jan Mladovsky”, in: Duisburger Journal - 1

1998

Marek Miler, “Installation of Jan Mladovsky”, in: Atelier, Prague, 8 January

1998

Milena Kr·lov·, “Chairs urging you to stop”, in: Liberecky den, Liberec, 2 February

1998

Michal Kolecek, “No more shyness, says this show”, in: MF Dnes, Prague, 14 February

1998

Anna Irmanovov·, “Jan Mladovsky - Ironic Icons”, in: LidovÈ noviny, Prague, 16 March1998

2000

Olaf Hanel, Jan Mladovsky, in: Atelier, Prague, May

Scholarships, Residences, Grants, Awards

1974

Italian Government Scholarship, Milan

1977

Artist in residence, Wilhelm-Lehmbruck Grant, Duisburg,
Germany

1978

Thyssen Stahl AG, Artist in residence, Duisburg, Germany
Grants and awards: The Arts Council of Great Britain,
The British Council, The Greater London Arts Association

1979

The British Council, exhibition grant.

1980

NSAD Researcg Grant

1981

NSAD Research Grant and sabbatical

PUBLIC LECTURES

1999

“Signs and Messages”, Koninklijke Akademie van
Beeldende Kunsten, Den Haag

PUBLIC COMMISSIONS

1983

Two murals for a public building, Stadt Duisburg - Buchholz,
Germany

1984

Public sculpture, Stadt Duisburg - Maiderich, Germany

2002-3

“Local Curiosity”, Public sculpture, Bilka, Czech-German Public Art Project
“Freundschaftsweg”