With its quietly intense quality, Miloš Michálek’s work has, over the past three decades, become an unmistakable part of Czech graphic art’s diverse spectrum. His graphic art expression can be understood above all as a systematic exploration of the processes by which the course of time is recorded both in the outward appearance of objects and in the inward form of the human mind. With Michálek, the visible records of physical reality become vehicles of symbolic reflection on how events and experiences are stored in the endless layers of memory.
Michálek’s visual idiom stems from the structural story of a surface that often bears its own ‘history’ in the sense of tangible traces left by people. It can, for example, be a wooden drawing board or a board for kneading dough. Michálek then supplements this ‘unknowing’ chronicle with his own inscriptions and signs, thus creating a subtle dialogue between the predetermined plasticity of the printing surface and what he himself aesthetically and symbolically incorporates into it. The literal imprint of the ‘surface record’ thus becomes a metaphorical print of human memory.
Miloš Michálek’s expression has evident roots in structural abstraction of the 20th century. However it also has deeper roots in the age-old tradition of illuminated manuscripts and altarpieces depicting the status of mortal man in relation to the ‘perfect infinity’ of spiritual consciousness. Despite – or, paradoxically, because of – the absence of a legible pictorial narrative, each of Michálek’s prints provides a wealth of potential reading for the viewer. What at first glance appears to be an introspective pictorial area rewards closer observation with a broad horizon of interpretation, whether conscious or intuitive.
For Miloš Michálek, the print is a focal point of an unending personal confession. The principle of fair and sensible communication is not simply the basis of his career as a respected teacher, but also an irrepressible motivation for his artistic activity. Creating a print is, for him, almost a matter of obsession. In the light of these facts, it is no coincidence that he has made series of prints in the form of a weekly and daily piece, and is currently working on a series of regular monthly prints as well. In an implicit discourse with the viewer, Michálek sometimes also moves out into real space with three-dimensional installations.
With his unique graphic art symbolism, Miloš Michálek reflects on mentally scarred society and also on the intimate environment of family relationships. Through this he pays tribute to the meaning of art and, at the same time, to the meaning of human life.
Prof. Mgr. Miloš Michálek is a leading Czech graphic designer, photographer and university teacher. Throughout his life, Michálek has been creating unmistakable, distinctive prints, sometimes even cycles, using his characteristic handwriting and techniques of woodcut, linocut, and drawing. He works with the technique of printing from above and mostly prints from wooden matrices. He is one of the founders of the Faculty of Art and Design of the J. E. Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. The author's teaching activities are the basis for his exhibitions. One of the most famous is the Drawings (365) project, in which students and their teacher created one drawing every day for a year. The result was 365 drawings created authentically every day.
Miloš Michálek is a member of the Czech art forum "Umělecká beseda". He has been awarded worldwide for his graphic work. He has been awarded first prize several times in the national competition exhibition "Grafika roku". His works have been included in more than seventy international graphic exhibitions held in Hungary, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Poland, but also in Japan and South Korea.
Special thanks to Galerie Středočeského kraje v Kutné Hoře for providing materials, texts and assistance in the realization of the exhibition, namely to the Jana Šorfová, Director GASK, to the Curator Richard Drury and to the Producer Lenka Trojanová.
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