The Fall

The cosmic gravitational force pulls all matter toward the center of the Earth. Water from above searches for cracks and openings in the top layers of hard rock, and flows through crevasses over the surface. The energy of falling water is constant, independent of time, the environment, aesthetics, or human-oriented time scales that contain an individual life. Gravity’s proof is the existence of cosmic mechanisms as an elemental power that holds everything together, a concentrational force with the precise equilibrium of clockwork. An adequate supply of falling matter - in this case water - is the only variable in the calculations of the power generated, and quickly changing conditions for the existence of life. The energy of collapse is a paradox.

The artwork “The Fall” brings an explicit model of confrontation to hydro power in its raw and abstract form. The work will consist of multi-channel video installations assembled from footage taken during an expedition in Iceland. The images will pass through post-production that involves an animated time-lapse effect and exposure correction. Another part of the installation will consist of the multi-channel sound that comes from these takes, but which is modulated according to the speed of each channel. The installation will be adapted to LCD monitors arranged in a concentrated space. Other spaces might find it ideal to present it as a set of multiscreen large-scale projections with distinctive multichannel sound in a separate darkened room.

Pavel Mrkus, October 2015

Pavel Mrkus MgA, Doc. (b 1970, Mělník) is an audiovisual artist who makes use of digital moving images and sound often in relation to specific space. He graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. His interest in Religious Studies together with experience of four years teaching position at Toyama City Institute of Glass Art in Japan lead him to unique mixture of cultural paradigms within his work. After showing at 50th Venice Biennial in 2003 he participated in many group and solo shows around world. Together with Daniel Hanzlik they established Time-Based Media studio at Faculty of Art and Design at J. E. Purkyne University in Usti nad Labem. He was awarded a Personality of the Year 2012 for his exhibition Next Planet in The Brno House of Arts.

"With a non-conflictual stubbornness, the artist seeks out and applies elements of cyberspace spirituality to artistic projects. He subconsciously compares this spirituality to the principles of transcendence in the analog world. Similar to how Eastern religious systems have become the philosophical point of reference for the work of the early Conceptualists, in many ways they represent, permeated as they are with traditional Christian spirituality, a landing point for the cosmic odyssey of this Czech artist." (Michal Koleček)