Jan Ambrůz graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in 1984. He gained a name for himself at Confrontation VII in Svárov in 1987, where he exhibited a geometrical construction made of dry plant stalks and cords on the surface of a local village pond. His interest in geometry took over from that in figural sculpture, which had marked the beginnings of his creative work.
A tendency toward constructive solutions minimised into basic geometrical forms has characterised his sculptures since that time. Since the 1980s, Ambrůz’s work has developed in two directions: one is focused on delicate constructions and installations made of sheets of glass, the other on work with wood. In both of these lines the artists reshapes in an innovative way the legacy of geometrical art and minimalism, as well as land art in certain works, since the placing of a work within a natural landscape plays an important role in Ambrůz’s work.
Many objects are created purely for a given place and time. After an installation comes to an end such a work subsequently only exists in the form of photographic documentation. Since 1988, Ambrůz has created a large series of glass constructions, large objects made of sheets of glass, laid on the ground or on an unstable wooden base, or hung feely in space using string (Infinity, 1987, Below One Another, 1987, Trio, 1987). The composition using sheets of glass gives rise to geometric grids in which one geometric motif is repeated. Basically, this involves the principle of multiplication as we know it from minimalism. However, Ambrůz adds an emotional charge by monitoring the relationship of the material (glass), light and air. These delicate, ephemeral and subtle, while at the same time monumental glass constructions levitate in space and force us to ask whether and if so how apparent instability can hold its own in the face of the laws of gravity. These sculptures accentuate the relationship between instability and stability and between mass and the denial thereof.
Along with glass sculptures Ambrůz began creating monumental wooden sculptures-constructions, from the start placed directly in the landscape (in specifically recommended places) and later in interiors (Cross, 1989, There, 1990, Vault, 1991). These are simple, geometrically shaped objects constructed from wooden beams processed using a chainsaw. Their lapidary, “uncultivated” character, almost like that of an unprocessed raw material, in combination with the landscape, distances them from cold geometry and they take on an almost ritualistic significance. It is as if they refer to totemic symbols, signs and figures, a kind of resuscitation of prehistory and its archetypes within today’s technical world.
In the 1990s, Amrůz discovered a new material, iron. He created a series of installations in which he placed iron plates in various shapes on the ground. In several of these works he used maximally reduced geometric forms. He restricted the language of geometry to its basic elements: circle, square, and rectangle. In these works he was closest to the tradition of classical geometrical art (Circles, Squares, 1995), though in certain installations he again deliberately violated the geometric precision: the edges of the iron plates are ragged or bent (Untitled, 1995).
Marble has featured in the artist’s work since the 1990s. Again, these are “floor” sculptures, in which the artist achieves special light effects through the different ways of polishing the surface of the marble or by placing individual parts against each other. However, Ambrůz did not completely give up working with glass in the following years. For instance On Cones I and II (2009), in which sheets of glass are spread out in a forest, demonstrates his love of landscape projects.
A characteristic feature of Ambrůz’s work is a special poetics which arises from the dialogue of object and environment, in which when the surrounding space becomes part of the installations. The language of geometry pervades the artist’s work, though this is a different language from that which we are used to from previous geometric and minimalist art. Strict successions, cold technical processing and a clear construction are always violated and “softened” in Ambrůz’s work, at one moment by the instability of the glass installations, at another by the primitivism of the surface of wooden or iron objects. An unsettling tension thus creeps into the artist’s sculptures, testimony to the transience and temporariness of things and to the paradox of life itself.
