Igor Korpaczewski

The beginnings of Igor Korpaczewski’s works belong to the time, when the performances of the protagonists from the group, Tvrdohlavých / Hardheads, began. This is the banner generation of Czech post-modernism. The strategy for Korpaczewski’s works however differs to a degree from the dominant social reflection of post-modernists in the 1980s. This artist devotes his time rather to introspection, and this is done on the basis of images that do not directly address his own person. We do of course know of self-portraits from among KW’s works, but their main content presents figural representations of other persons. It is worth mentioning that the model is rarely concretised (these are not addressed portraits). His models may come from a circle of persons close to the artist. Nonetheless, the subsequent representation has more general features like those of allegory or personification. This approach concurs with certain post-modernist tendencies (as are mentioned by C. Owens). It is a reaction to the modernist dualist concept. Modernism moved between the poles (extremes) of cosmological symbols and individual expression. The post-modern reaction represents among other things a certain return to allegory as a sort of fabulatory strategy, where the importance of the issue of role, story, takes on greater importance. Korpaczewski’s figures are actors in roles that join both concrete and more general features. The storylines often come from the archives of timeless, existential intrigues (death, love) or from updated mythology (Young god / Mladý bůh). Korpaczewski focuses on the figure in its subjective „placement“. Most of the time these are individual, isolated figures. This strategy enhances the relationship between the viewer-artist and model: the relationship between Me and You (in the Lévinas sense). „You“ is here a mirror to the subject, its partner in a dialogue thanks to which the subject can recognise or constitute him-/herself at all. The painting itself also fulfils this role as the footprint of the individual. The viewer’s subject creates itself in relation to the painting with its concrete features of a living, vulnerable entity. This is not however traditional expansive expression (which tends rather to attack the viewer), but rather a certain self-enclosing, emphatic meeting event with compact individuality (the reduced colour of the image, its closed volume and limited space all add to this). The image-figure gives itself here to the viewer in its non-reduced presence, without any manipulation or suggestion for emotional reaction. The figure simply is.