The sculpting work of Pavel Doskočil, an artist from the current mid generation, is diverse and integral at the same time. His sculptures have post-modernistic traits: freed media from direct modernistic references, mocking of historical consequences as well as kitsch’s, installation character of his work in its final form, etc.
His installations and sculpting objects are not strictly tagged as the media of sculpture, however. Doskočil works with sculpture primarily to the extent of using various materials: wood, plaster, natural materials, etc. In the installations in his exhibitions, we can observe, in the individual artefacts, consistent accuracy in the formal processing. This consistency of form practically emblematically represents the daily reality both in his hanging objects (e.g. antler hunting trophies), as well as in utilitarian objects, which are often perceived as “ready-mades” – hence already existing (e.g. brooms). These are subsequently developed into a free continuation in the form of genre symbols (bare tree with a trunk the base of which is a broom, minimalistic panorama of a landscape from wooden poles). The aesthetics of his objects’ reality and his treatment thereof is eventually completely freed of any decorativeness. Every artefact bears a direct reference to models in reality. However, it is not about a description but about transformation of the viewed model to a very concise resultant. Antlers or hanger-swastika are presented with a basically stern shifting. Doskočil moves between the borders of ornament (particularly in the phenomenon of landscape), which the reduction in the material used offers him, and between the borders of sculpting treatment. We can best observe these reverberations in the installations of his exhibitions. His object or objects do not usually stay convulsively “on the ground”. Antlers, hanging objects, some of them practically pictorially dealt with in plans, usually arch in the gallery space offered. Humour, or rather irony has an important role since it is applied (if it is applied) as the result of a mutated connection of real objects (particularly those meant for cleaning: broom, plastic garbage container, etc.) and treated material into traces genres. The poles of wooden handles in the final object create a linear character, which we subsequently read as a specific visual experience.
The appearance of Pavel Doskočil’s artistic approach unwinds from the rustic environment that he lives in. The closeness of landscape, working at home with all the proper instruments and natural objects are part of his daily experience. However, through the rustic forms, Doskočil grasps topics and issues that have a wider meaning. He drives at artistic processes of the previous decades, as well as at topics taboo by historical thinking. This is demonstrated, for example, in the installation of little figures that can be interpreted as crucifixes or as male figures with erect penises. The size corresponds, in strict Christian households, to crucifixes hung on the wall. He deals with the symbol of swastika, misused by Nazism, in a similar way, which suffered quite mocking trauma in the postmodern wave, primarily in German art. Doskočil “designs it into a hanger. With his utilitarian reconstruction he wants to swerve from the rooted history of the symbol.
Sculpture, just like other affiliated media with a classical label, is currently going through intellectually directed changes influenced by hereditary symbols of conceptual tendencies of the past century. At the same time these media are perceived as subliminal and, in the hands of opposite mechanisms, they acquire a more intuitive and perhaps freer image. Let’s say that the work of Pavel Doskočil is a connection of both of these opposing tendencies.
