I first met Václav Litvan (b. 1983) at an exhibition in Ústí nad Labem, which he organized together with Anna Hulačová, his then partner and now wife. At the time, he was a student, now a graduate of the Intermedia Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. It was 2010, and it was a dialogue exhibition at the NF gallery by Luděk Prošek, where I was already struck by Litvan’s simplicity, Duchamp-like directness, and conceptual thinking.
His current sculpture exhibition, entitled Vzduch, voda, Velký a Malý vůz, is based on found objects which he subjects to formal and semantic preparation. He shifts the ready-made principle towards a search for the object’s essence, from the physical find through its cultural context to its ideal form. He transforms the theme of wear-and-tear, necessity, and invisibility of everyday things, often with the addition of personal stories, into relief modifications exploring the relationship between the object, its representation, and its meaning. I am fascinated by recycling itself and the possibility of looking at ordinary things differently: with a new story and a new mission. Their fragile transformation also echoes an inconspicuous ecological call for the basic elements. For without water and air, there is no Earth, and without them, even the universe with its stars would not shine.
A few days ago, I finished reading On Earth We‘re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong, where he beautifully captures the famous modernist Marcel Duchamp. He writes: “I’m thinking now of Duchamp, his infamous “sculpture.” How by turning a urinal, an object of stable and permanent utility, upside down, he radicalized its reception. By further naming it Fountain, he divested the object of its intended identity, rendering it with an unrecognizable new form. I hate him for this. I hate how he proved that the entire existence of a thing could be changed simply by flipping it over, revealing a new angle to its name, an act completed by nothing else but gravity, the very force that traps us on this earth.” (VUONG, O.: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Penguin Press, 2019. P. 161-162.)
And so is the exhibition of Václav Litvan, Vzduch, voda, Velký a Malý vůz. Each thing can change its trajectory and write a new story. The author’s perspective offers a unique manual to do so.