Ján Mančuška

Ján Mančuška completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts as a painter in 1998. However, having supplied the paintings for his thesis work with Lego pieces,

it featured the final turn in his creative style. Not long after that, he produced a series of reliefs and objects entitled It Hurts Only When I'm Laughing (1999), having used mundane household objects such as ear swabs, straws, tooth picks and pins, as the expressions of the intimate nature of the fireside. Mančuška’s unique aesthetic style and the themes he continues to address through his work today were already strongly present in that series. It Hurts Only When I'm Laughing was followed by a collection of objects entitled 3+1(1999). Here, Mančuška used ordinary sewing thread tightened around nails in place of drawing. The series included objects of bigger size, such as a dining table and chairs, and a television with an arm chair created directly on the wall. Everyday objects with subtly skewed symbolic messages such as a sink with a tap made from bars of soap, or a drinking cup made of sugar cubes comprised his next series in 1999, which he called Morning (2001). The confusing visual aspects of these objects was not the only important theme in this series, however. Instead, Mančuška’s work is born from the observation of the most intimate facets of the world around him, as well as from subtle social analysis. The materials he uses are things we find in every bathroom cupboards, kitchen drawers, or in the stationary shop round the corner. These object lend his work intimacy and familiarity that are rare in art. But at the same time they are used in an exclusive fashion not because of their luxurious nature but rather because they are designed (or perhaps more appropriately: they find their way to) for a very narrow circle of consumers. A series of reliefs on Formica slabs imitating expensive materials, which he named Hard, has been created from a combination of black-marker drawings and real-life objects like rubber gloves and match boxes. Even concerning his next series, and as the title, Liberated Household(2000), suggests, the home is the central point. These objects were created for an exhibition of the same name at the gallery Na bidýlku as a natural continuation of thought on his earlier installation, Morning 2001, the difference being that in the Liberated Household series the suggestion of the uselessness of the objects he creates is far more accentuated. This idea is expressed with pieces like a cigarette box turned inside out or an armchair made from ear swabs. Mančuška explained the meaning of these contrasts in an interview with Jana and Jiří Ševčík: “My works may look like a house, no one knows if it’s real, or just a prop. The back side of a prop reveals the construction, the scaffolding that holds it up. You always know it’s a house, you know where the windows are, but you think about it in a slightly different way. I turn the whole object upside down to show it does not have just flank. It has much more of them and, when destroying one sight principle, layer after layer reveals. That is a key component to understanding the meaning of what I do. I offer a different view on all these materials, their cross-references to the way people treat these things and their conceptual meanings. I enjoy the order of revelations a viewer has to go through when looking at my work.” Mančuška deals with the idea of revealing all the possible aspects of an object and the subsequent shifting of meaning in further works like the …and Back Again series (2004), a collection that helped him to earn the Jindřich Chaloupecký Prize. At the exhibition of modern art in Brno’s Moravská Gallery he covered selected works with metal slabs, into which writings on the relativity of history and the interpretation of art were engraved. The works were possible to be seen just through the holes. Mančuška developed this tenet in many of his latter works, including the Reed It! collection (2006), in the installation at the Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York. This form of inscription incorporated into the artwork of Jan Mančuška has become more and more prevalent over the last several years. The writings include simple stories, and personal anecdotes and observances made by the artist himself. Yet this technique is becoming less of an “eye catcher” and more of an essential element to his works – the narration, offering various possibilities. In his collections, While I Walked… (2005) and True Story (2005), the artist’s commentaries are scribed on separator strips, allowing on-lookers to decide how they will read into the words. By doing this, Mančuška not only changes the space, but he also calls on his audience to interact by forcing them to move through the zone in order to read the texts. Despite the fact Jan Mančuška’s work is deeply anchored in the day-to-day context of a local world, he is one of the few Czech artists of the younger generation to establish himself on the international scene. He has become an astute and original narrator of the triviality of our lives through works that are more than just visually alluring.

Selected performances:

2010

The Reverse Play, Archa Theatre

2009

The Invisible – Acting in sequences, 4+4 Days in Motion, 14th International theatre festival, former Federal Assembly building, Prague

Civic Play, part of Place and Formula performance festival, GASK, Kutna Hora

2008

Reverse play –Theatre, Takkelloftet, The Royal Theatre Copenhagen, part of U-Turn, The Quadrennial of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen

Falls an mir was Gutes ist, dann bin nur ich das, der das weiss, Stadtkino Basel (in collaboration with Kunsthalle Basel and Theater Basel ), Basel

2007

If there is anything good about me I’m the only one who knows, Svetozor cinema theatre / tranzit.cz, Prague

The Invisible – Acting in sequences, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm

The Invisible – Acting in sequences, Frankfurter Kunstverien, Frankfurt

www.ceskenoviny.cz/kultura/vytvarne/zpravy/newyorske-moma-vystavuje-v-unikatni-expozici-dilo-jana-mancusky/372674

Rozhovor Jána Mančušky s Jiřím Kovandou, Frieze No.113, březen 2008 (v aj), www.frieze.com/issue/article/jiri_kovanda/

www.tranzitdisplay.cz/sites/default/files/JM_JK_Frieze_CZ.pdf

"Mám rád lidi, kteří to pročísnou", Respekt 31/ 2008

ČT 2, kultura.cz 21.7. 2008, www.ceskatelevize.cz/program/10169309707-20.07.2008-18:30-2-kultura-cz.html

16.5. 2007, 17.30, DigiLab AVU, živé vysílání, archiv

dl.avu.cz/lang/en-us/2007/05/jan-mancuska/

časopis Displayer, Basel, listopad 2007

www.tranzitdisplay.cz/sites/default/files/JM_Displayer_CZ.pdf

"Focus on...Ján Mančuška", Frieze No.102, říjen 2006 (v aj), www.frieze.com/issue/article/jan_mancuska

Umělec 1/2004, Ingrid Chu / „Read it / Čti to“ - Ján Mančuška v Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

www.divus.cz/umelec/cz/pages/umelec.php

Interview abou the Backwards Play on RadioWave (Archa Theatre, 2010)

www.rozhlas.cz/radiowave/waveculture/_zprava/695598