Milan Klic

acts of insurgency

of cultural fusion, ongoing, never complete. I was born and educated in former Czecho-slovakia, today’s Czech Republic. At that time the country was a part of the communist block and all aspects of culture, visual arts in particular, were subject to political dogma and tough censorship. My natural inclination towards sculpture seemed unrealistic in such environment, desires had to be put aside, postponed, silenced and reduced to dreams. I chose Natural Sciences (math, computer sci-ence) as a practical survivor’s way. I graduat-ed in 1974 from Palacky University, Olomouc with MS and began my career as computer programmer.

As happens with totalitarian regimes, oppres-sion spawns underground subculture where individuals live and create in seclusion, hiding from the society rather than seeking meaningful communication with others, ex-cept those who are in similar predicament – “internal emigrants”.

Mine is a story of an immigrant,

internal e/migrants

But, dreams are weaving their fabric in their realm, spontaneously, beyond rational and practical considerations. As a way of spiritual survival, I was seeking expression in visual arts, first drawing and terra-cotta sculptures, then wood-carved, figurative ones.

Most of the early figures are now in various private collections in Europe, others here in US, reminders of a period of still evolving style. Several exhibitions in the old country were recognized and appreciated mostly by people tied to the subculture by similar

inner gravity.

The conditions in former communist regime eventually led to emigration in 1985. Exposure to highly technological, concept-driven civilization manifested itself in transformed perception, changed themes, materials used, aesthetic values. After the “Velvet revolution” in Czecho-slovakia, when we all sighed with some relief, my sculptural expression was of rather intimate, lyrical nature. I gained a lot when I studied sculpture at Brandeis University, Waltham, MA in 1989-1992.

Relatively peaceful 1990’s produced array of spatial metaphors, still readable in language of classical abstract modern-ism, bearing the seal of European heritage. But things are not going “velvet” in contemporary world, recent years profoundly changed our ways of thinking about the world,

anxieties yet

unknown

are now

common

particles of

everyday

experience.

I feel it as my inner

choice to respond

to this traumatized

social and cultural

milieu.

Fleeting perceptions of constantly flowing nature are our destiny, leaving us with visual residue, spatial echoes. Are we in tune with natural phenomena enough to survive unharmed? Are we part of them or are we distancing ourselves from them, not seeing our eyes? Is there some other, rather metaphori-cal dimension to them which we are not aware of yet?

Some of these sculptures are allusions of earth memorizing human inter-vention and of indelible traces we impose on our natural and social envi-ronment.

Emotional divides, virtual voids between substances, fragments of faith are

themes of this category of my sculpture, having been explored in drawings

before taking shape as spatial metaphors. What is actually spanning the

space here and the space beyond? Is it our concept of destination or is it a

real thing? Would we be ever able to traverse back?

Will we find the bridges of the past again?

Because if the wheel forgets its formula,it will sing nude with herds of horses;

The theme of wheel, vehicle, to me the most mysterious and intriguing of human contraptions,

and spiritual entanglements associated with it, offer intrinsic metaphor of existence. Dreamlike

constructs, primitive and frail in their execution and use of organic materials, they refer back

to the origins of travel and to the dominance of automobiles in contemporary society. In their

fragility they express the psychological toll we pay for living in a world which at every mo-

ment seems to be obsessed with relentless mobility. In composition they seem to many viewers

like spatial drawings, reduced to bare essentials and bizarre in their non-functionality, as if

time and motion were suspended from within their very essence.

Traversing space

having soul as

the only limb,

tracing some real

or imaginary

trajectories -

do they have

destinations as

they have

departure points?

They must have,

since we are

always moving,

whereabouts

known or

presumed.

On the withered, waveless solitude,The dented mask was dancing.Half of the world was sand,the other half mercury and dormant sunlight.

Posing heat-tempered steel against cotton fiber, men-

acing blades against organic shapes speaks of anxi-

ety and emotional distress. Metal blades swaying in

the wind, touching, wounding, are both threats and

bearers of meaning encrypted in the composition.

Are they tattooing our memory permanently or do

they recede in time? Would the metaphor be able to

restore some dignity to this vulnerable creature call-

ing itself human?

At the rise of the moonbells fade outand impassable paths appear.

Days shed their skinsjust like snakes……These haven’t changed since our old mothers’ time.

Emotional gravity seeking focus, not always palpable and maybe entirely woven out of dreams - where the mythical innocence is?

Something is always winding the spiral of desire for comfort away and beyond.

In sleepless nights the world, ostensibly known, shows

its shadows, darker or brighter, bizarre because yet

not seen. Time passing at other than its conventional

pace shapes the field of consciousness with ruthless

tools. Can we still redeem some tranquility out of it

by reading a humble metaphor of this experience?

Certainly we cannot dismiss this kind of awareness,

it is part of our being.

Let me live unmirrored.