Vladimír Havlík was born in 1959. In 2006 he had a large retrospective exhibition in Olomouc and Brno at which almost his entire output was represented. In 2009 at the Parallel Gallery in Prague he first presented his archival films, the music demo-cassette Different Speed from 1980, and a catalogue including the documentation of selected events and private photographs. The exhibition was called Yesterday and was curated by Barbora Klímová and Filip Cenek.
Havlík’s cooperation with Barbora Klímová dates back to the project REPLACED – BRNO – 2006, with which Klímová won the Jindřich Chalupecký Award and in which she repeated Havlík’s performance Experimental Flower (1981). So far the latest result of this long collaboration is Havlík’s appearance at the exhibition Mutually (Tranzit dielne, Bratislava, 2012), which examines the unofficial artistic activities of the 1970s and 80s through the private archives of several Czech and Slovak artists. Typical of Havlík are reflections upon his own work and a thin dividing line between art and life. The events he was involved in from the end of the 1970s to the mid-80s best exemplify this fact. Even after many years these simple events remain attractive. They involve poeticism, romanticism, naivety, a tangible camaraderie, and an amusing exhibitionism, and are balanced between the high-minded and the immediately undermined. In this respect Havlík attained his peak at the double exhibition in Olomouc – A Critical History of Action Art (Gallery Caesar, 2009) and Old Performer (Restaurant U Muzea, 2009). In the first exhibition he ironically returned to references to the history and operations of art with which his work is infused. He descended to the very edge of the ridiculous in obscene paintings of instructions to performances in the legendary (underground) pub. He also subjects his own most personal medium of performance to critique in his most recent events (AKT – Performance Art Festival, Brno, 2009).
The local context as an important condition for creative work is highlighted in Klímová’s exhibition in Olomouc entitled For Those Who Were Not Born Here? (Gallery Caesar, 2007), at which she presented a survey of the relationship several local art personalities had with the place they lived. Havlík remained in Olomouc from his studies of art at the local pedagogical faculty where he continues to teach to this day. The documentation of events from the 1980s reveals his incursion into the environment of the city in the Haná region via private action gestures charting the new life space and happenings for friends organised with Ed Cupák and Radek Horáček. Getting to terms with the position of an Olomouc performer he passed through self-flagellatory titles of a video, originally of the silent film Jestrdej (1983; Yesterday, 2009).
Everything that Olomouc represented for Havlík in the 1980s is shown more fully in the catalogue to the retrospective exhibition Soft Spirit. A host of interrogated period genres – books, minimalistic conceptual objects and pieces, textual and symbolic collages, visual poetry, etc. – refer to contacts with conceptual Brno. What this early stage of his work is or could mean to Havlík these days is open to debate. The delicate constructions that he has been creating over the last few years with Barbora Klímová combine an introspective look back on a redefined past. In the light of current discourse the memories come alive in a surprisingly sharp light. Havlík is grateful to Barbora Klímová not only for the discovered “margins” of his own artistic past, but also for the revival of a model of cooperation, a fundamental aspect of his work as an artist.
(In the 1990s Havlík focused on drawing illuminated church ground plans, referring more deeply to a childhood spent in the environment of a catholic family in Vysočina. His later paintings make a link between the spiritual space and the forms of space rockets and end in abstraction. At this time he was involved in performance only sporadically.)
Blanka Švédová
Since 1999 associate professor - painting
Studies:
1978-1983 Faculty of Education Palacky University in Olomouc (Alena Nádvorníková, František Dvořák, Jana Jemelková, Zdeněk Přikryl ad.)
Symposiums, festivals:
2012 Semena dobra, Galerie Ferdinanda Baumanna, Praha
2009 AKT 4, Performance Art Festival, Dům umění města Brna, Brno
2005 Mezinárodní sympozium Místa paměti, areál bývalého augustiniánského kláštera ve Šternberku
2003 16. Internationales Kunstforum, Schloss Eichhofen, Německo
1999 Zeichnung: Linie, Künstlersymposium 1999, Peuerbach, Rakousko
1997 O počátku, klášter Plasy
1997 A.K.T. 1, Performance Art Festival, Galerie mladých U dobrého pastýře, Brno
1997 Malamut´97, mezinárodní festival akčního umění, Ostrava
1996 Zpřítomnění, klášter Rosa coeli, Dolní Kounice
1994 I. ročník sympozia uměleckých instalací (ŠAMIS ´94), Šternberk
1994 Zastavený čas II, Třebíč
1994 Malamut ´94, mezinárodní festival akčního umění, Ostrava
1993 Zastavený čas, synagoga na Palmovce, Praha
1989 2. nemzetközi kisérleti művészeti fesztivál / 2. medzinárodný festival experimentálného umenia, Stúdio Erté, Nové Zámky, SK
Pedagogical activities:
od 1990 Katedra výtvarné výchovy PdF UP Olomouc (1999 habilitace)
1998 - 2002 FaVU, Brno
2003–2004 St. Cloud State University, Department of Art, Minnesota, USA
Lectures abroad:
2003 Macomb Community College, Department of Art, Clinton Township, Michigan, USA
2002 Univesidad de Castilla – La Mancha, Facultad de Bellas Artes,
Cuenca, E
2001 Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milano, I
1996 St. Cloud State University, Department of Art, Minnesota, USA
1994 TEMPUS. L‘Ecole Régionale des Beaux Arts, Dunkerque, F
1994 University of Leicester, Department of Art, GB
1993 TEMPUS. L‘Institut d‘Enseignement Supérieur Pédagogique, Namur, B
1992 Miami University Oxford, Ohio, USA
1991 Vestbirk Folk High School, DK
Catalogues, publications:
- Vladimír Havlík. ActionS and Interventions 1978-1988. amt project – Sputnik Edition, Bratislava 2012
- AKT 4 – performance Art Festival. (DVD). Dům umění města Brna, Brno 2009
- Vladimír Havlík. Kritické dějiny akčního umění. Galerie Caesar, Olomouc 2009
- Nikolas Proksch (ed.), Listování – Moderní knižní kultura ve sbírkách Muzea umění Olomouc. Muzeum oderního umění, Olomouc 2009
- Ladislav Daněk – Pavel Zatloukal (eds.), Skleník. Muzeum moderního umění, Olomouc 2009
- Vladimír Havlík. Stár. Divadlo hudby, Olomouc, 2009
- Vladimír Havlík. Yesterday. Text Vladimír Havlík. Galerie Parallel, Praha, 2009
- Vladimír Havlík. Půdorysy, symetrie, transformace. Text Jiří Hůla. Geofyzikální ústav, Praha, 2008
- Velké prádlo – 200. výstava Galerie Caesar. Galerie Caesar, Olomouc 2008
- Ladislav Daněk. Projekt – neprojekt. Galerie Caesar, Olomouc 2008
- Štěpánka Bieleszová (ed.), Nechci v kleci. Muzeum moderního umění, Olomouc 2008
- Barbora Klímová. Těm, kdo se tady nenarodili? Texty Jiří Ptáček, Jiří Valoch, rozhovory. Galerie Caesar, Olomouc 2007
- Radek Horáček (ed.), Vladimír Havlík. Soft Spirit, Brno 2006
- Vladimír Havlík. Obrázkové přílohy. Text Antonín Mareš. Olomouc, Divadlo hudby 2003
- Vladimír Havlík. Bez úvodního textu. Prostějov, Galerie Pokorný
[2001]
- Vladimír Havlík. Retrovirus. Texty Vít Havránek, Vladimír Havlík. Opava, Dům umění 2000
- Vladimír Havlík. Text autor. Ostrava, Centrum kultury a vzdělávání 2000
- Vladimír Havlík 1978–1998. Texty Jiří Valoch, Marek Pokorný, Vladimír Havlík. Ústí nad Labem – Praha, Nadace „Lidé výtvarnému umění – výtvarné umění lidem“ – JNJ Galerie 1998
- Vladimír Havlík. The Challenger or an Angel. Text Jiří Valoch. [Olomouc, Nákladem autora 1996]
- Vladimír Havlík. Kresby. Text Jiří Valoch. [Brno, Galerie Na bidýlku 1996]
- Vladimír Havlík. Windows 96. Text Radek Horáček. Brno, Dům umění 1996
- Vladimír Havlík. Práce pro místo. Bez úvodního textu. Brno, Galerie Sýpka 1994
- Vladimír Havlík. Obrázky z cest. Text Vladimír Havlík. [Galerie Fiducia, Frýdek-Místek 1994]
- Vladimír Havlík, Václav Stratil. Svět. Praha, Galerie Behémót 1993
- Vladimír Havlík. Leda s labutí. Texty Ivan Krajíček, Vladimír Havlík. Olomouc, Galerie Caesar 1993
- Vladimír Havlík. Za svitu měsíce. Text Vladimír Havlík (básně). [Brno, Galerie Na bidýlku 1993]
- Vladimír Havlík. Za svitu měsíce. Text Vladimír Havlík. [Olomouc, Nákladem autora 1993]
- Vladimír Havlík. Kristovy roky. Neznačený text [= Vladimír Havlík]. Olomouc, Divadlo hudby 1992
- Stará škola. Fotodokumentace a kresby Vladimíra Havlíka a Radka Horáčka. Bez úvodního textu. [Brno, TT klub 1991]
- Vladimír Havlík. Kresby. Texty Vladimír Havlík, Jiří Valoch. Brno, Galerie mladých 1991
- Vladimír Havlík. Fotozáznamy, autorské knihy. Text Jiří Valoch. [Olomouc, Galerie pod podloubím 1986]. Nestr. [katalog-plakát]
- Jiří Valoch,Akční umění a starý performer, in. Ateliér 10/2009, s. 5
- Jiří Valoch, Několik poznámek k výstavě Vladimíra Havlíka, in. Ateliér 5/2007, s. 7
- David, Voda, Měkká magie Vladimíra Havlíka (rozhovor), in. A2 9/ 2007, s. 9
- Štěpánka Bieleszová, Duel, in. Ateliér 8/2006, s. 5
- Ladislav Daněk, Je pomalost opakem rychlosti? [rozhovor], in. Detail 5/III, 1998, s. 10-11