ETCETERA ART, Prague, 1. – 17.3. 2023
Matěj Macháček: Sunset Archers
The exhibition of Matěj Macháček, a painter and graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague’s ETCETERA ART may be an unexpected encounter with the intensity of colours and the ambiguous play between the fragility of Far East-inspired technique and the almost performative entry of the artist himself into the imaginary spaces of his paintings.
A moment of intense concentration when body and mind must act in full synergy. Breath held, muscles tensed, and eyes fixed on the target. Being united with your goal, no matter what is going on around you. This is the position of the archer in that brief moment before the shot, as we know it from many scenes of classical art and contemporary visual culture and sport. It is the position of the hero in the decisive moment (we can see this, for example, in Bourdelle’s monumental Heracles the Archer), but also the astrological Sagittarius, identified with the wise centaur Chiron. Sagittarius is the sign of prophets and oracles, whose judgment never misses its mark. In contemporary popular culture, the role of the archer is occupied, for example, by the elf Legolas, so youthful yet filled with the experience of old age. The bow and arrow are therefore his ideal weapon, combining balance and speed.
It was this moment that Matěj Macháček took as his own in his series of paintings Sunset Archers. The monumental format of this series, in which the author himself acts as the main actor, is in a strangely ambivalent relationship with the artistic technique which he uses. The Chinese-inspired watercolour painting is applied to large areas of paper, but its language of rhythmic strokes filled with calm and order is revealed to the viewer mainly only when viewed up close. From a distance, on the other hand, everything is dominated by very rich colour pigments, which make the areas of the paintings almost glowing surfaces entering the surrounding environment as sharply and strikingly as the gaze of an archer and the arrow he shoots. This technique of saturating the paper with a thick fluid of intense pigment is a method in which the artist has achieved an unexpected combination of fragility and impact. Just as the archer likes to position himself with his back to the sun to dazzle his opponent, the painter retains the advantage of the first shot into the surprised eyes of the viewer.
The vast expanses of monumental figurative paintings have always been regarded in Western art as an ideal vehicle for telling stories and representing cultural archetypes. In his series of paintings, Matěj Macháček actually tells his own story. However, like a dramatic film scene, it is just a series of cuts to key moments. The artist’s story here is not a plot told in episodes, but the painting itself, from which he aims his brush and self-performative output at us as viewers.
The Sunset Archers series is for the painter not only platform for staging himself in an actually almost boyishly heroic role, as he appears in a number of different positions as an archer, but also, on closer inspection, the colourful landscapes we know from Chinese culture, into which he enters with his delicate and intimate painting technique in order, like the archer, to unerringly hit the targets of his composition.
Viktor Čech
ART HAS NO HISTORY 