Martin Zetová
*1959 (Czech Republic)
Studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Department of Sculpture
lives and works in Libušín near Kladno
Artist with a classical sculpture studies, which however systematically escapes him. The sculptor, performer, multimedia artist is not satisfied with the conception of the work as a static figure. In his conception, art is a process, often metaphorical. The artist reflects on duration, the continuity of behavioural frameworks and their stereotypes, working with memory and forgetting. The last time he was intensely engaged, when he voluntarily confronted himself with the work of his father, the sculptor Miloš Zet and his monumental realisations from the socialist period. He likes to deal with the temporal and at the same time personal context of his own works. Between 1998 and 2008, he worked at the Centre for Contemporary Art in Libušín, and then as head of the Video Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology.
RELICS (2023-2024)
An idea enters the head, a thought, it shuts out the rest of the world, only it matters, only it matters. The alien wants to become a larva from an egg, to use all the energy and resources of its host, to pupate, to materialize in its final form. Sometimes she succeeds, sometimes time or an unexpected event disrupts her dominance. The transformation fails, the egg, the larva, the pupa, dries up.
But there are other reasons why there are promises of wholes, wholes, fragments of wholes, objects associated with agencies associated with wholes lying around.
And then it can also be quite simple: the thing is finished, the certainty of importance associated with its creation wears off, the intoxication of the work is replaced by a sobering hatred of the original intoxication. If no one waits for the thing that is finished, and the author, in order to live on, has to forget about it, it is easy for it to end up buried, hidden, dismantled.And when no one – not even a dog – barks for something that no one knows exists, it can happen that the individual components become separated, standing somewhere, but over time it is hard to tell what they belong to, rejoining with something else to change the sound,then they get in someone’s way, then they can be used to load something flying, which gives them a new function, which gives them any function at all, because only the author dreamed of the original one and even he has forgotten it, etc.And then the author stumbles upon them, realizes they are familiar, and starts looking for what else is part of them, and when he finds it, he is surprised that even after decades he is unable to put the whole thing on trial, he is so happy to have completed it, the echo of the concentration of its creation resonates in him, he still has no idea if it is good, boring, bad.