SYMPLOKÉ / ΣΥΜΠΛΟΚH

Exhibition opening on Thursday, October 22, 2026, at 6:00 PM.

Curated by Miroslav Haľák

With artistic commentaries by: Roberta Bielik, Julie Hayward, and Frenzi Rigling.

Foreign words, which usually deter the general public from reading art-historical texts, should not be a tool for pseudo-intellectual exhibitionism, but an indispensable aid for describing phenomena that transcend everyday life. Art is precisely such a phenomenon in our lives, and therefore, to explain what is happening, for example, in Ivan Pinkava's photographs, a mere basic vocabulary is not enough. If certain concepts, for example, from post-structuralist vocabulary, are not used and repeated ad nauseam merely as a fashionable mannerism, then the search for the correct expression to describe complex relationships within an artistic composition can direct us on an adventurous journey through time and space, on a journey of the adventure of knowledge. This exhibition of Ivan Pinkava's photographs also invites us on such a journey, for in an effort to penetrate beyond the surface layer of his human bodies, accumulated materials, or atypical piles of objects, we transcend the categories of simple descriptions of beauty.

In Plato's late dialogue Sophist, we encounter the concept of interweaving (symploké), which is unfairly overlooked in art theory. The philosophical term symploké ("σύν" [syn-] – prefix: "with", "together" or "together with" / "πλέκω" [plekó] – verb: "to weave", "to intertwine" or "to braid") can denote the mutual connection, for example, between objective reality and subjective imagination. On the basis of this word, the encounter of the unreal with the knowable takes place, but also the encounter of an abstract idea with a materialized form. These confrontations, moreover, form the substance of every work of art. Ancient philosophy used a textile metaphor to emphasize the advantages of combining seemingly disparate elements into a meaningful whole. Art often presents us with the difficult task of revealing a code of internal correlations in a tangle of external incompatibilities. However, it would be a mistake to assume that every work of art has such a disposition, just as it would be naive to assume that every painting or sculpture necessarily wants to express complex aspects of human existence. Artists weave from diverse threads of individual inspirations, but the resulting fabric can also reveal their disparity. It is therefore all the more precious to discover a work whose strength lies in how internally coherent a fabric the author managed to weave from different strands of thought.

Ivan Pinkava's photographs are aesthetically engaging, but their form is not merely a self-serving constructive-compositional exercise, nor a superficial mediation of predictable contents. With an artistic language he has perfected over the years, Ivan Pinkava creates visual texts with a recognizable authorial signature, yet it is only between the imaginary lines, on a kind of intertextual level, that those precious connections, that interweaving of surprising realities, can be discovered. The iconography of his works may lead to the search for superficial analogies from art history and to an attempt to simply decipher the message of the naked figure, but the fact remains that behind the stylized poses of the photographed figures and still lifes with layered surfaces of various materials and textures lies an almost physically palpable tension. In dramatic lighting, both bodies and mundane textile fragments, draped fabrics, synthetic foams, chairs, furniture, plants, or tarpaulins, boards, planks, and beams are staged in the same way. Anonymous spaces of a liminal character are the scene for a static moment of interweaving of the concrete with the supernatural. It is fascinating how the polarity of the form of objects and the content of thoughts is visualized in Ivan Pinkava's photographs. The result is never merely a trivial object, a mere shot of a roll of foam rubber or a spread-out carpet. Beyond the materiality of each of Ivan's objective constructions lies a poetic dimension of being.

It is astonishing how Pinkava manipulates human anatomy and, on the other hand, how he composes inanimate matter. In the extensive series of his nudes, which are in principle portraits of subjects, we, on the contrary, find the essence of inanimate objectivity. It would not be correct to say that the male bodies in Ivan's photographs are emptied forms, instrumentalized to passively fulfill random, static scenarios. Rather, it is a mythical transformation of man into other positions of sensually perceived existence. To describe this phenomenon, we will use other terms such as cosmomorphism and anthropomorphism. If the degree of human transformation reaches the level of almost mindless objectivity, we speak of cosmomorphism, i.e., a situation where a torso or limb becomes a compositional tool, matter serving a certain purpose. In the opposite process, Pinkava is able to imbue ordinary objects with character, that Benjaminian aura of individual authenticity, through his photographs. This is when we speak of anthropomorphism, i.e., the humanization of inanimate objects. Each of these transformational phenomena in Pinkava's work creates different prerequisites for understanding the resulting interweaving, as a point where a fabric of a cohesive image emerges from disparity.

To make the paths to understanding the meanings of these photographs clearer, we will use a navigation system guided by the coordinates of three different artistic interventions by Roberta Bielik, Julie Hayward, and Frenzy Rigling. In three different chapters, external elements corresponding to Pinkava's photographs are situated, each with a different qualitative parameter and always based on a different philosophical concept. In the chapter Proskynésis / προσκύνησις, it is about the tension between the human figure and the ritualization of a historically significant gesture. In the chapter Diafora / διαφορά, it is about the transformation of the body towards a cosmomorphic structure, and in the chapter Paronymos / παρώνυμος, it is about revealing how Pinkava imprints a state of being into inanimate substances. If, after touring the three floors, and thus the three chapters, of the Špála Gallery, the interweaving – symploké of the diverse elements of Pinkava's works into a cohesive, richly meaningful image becomes somewhat more illustrative, then the goal of this exhibition will also be fulfilled.

Miroslav Haľák