To Lukáš

You often stress that you are primarily a performance artist, although apparently you do like to see the fleeting moments somewhat materializing, while the exhibition environment either anticipates or prolongs the existence of performative events. Everything is arranged to be touched and manipulated with your particular sense for intensity and tension; all the surfaces and realities being there for one and only purpose, to create an exact negative space for the body in every possible position and scenario. The audience, the crew – your crew – is drawn in on various levels, invited to interact and evolve, but also carefully instructed about what would be the desirable form and outcome of their moves. You say there is a lot of space for fluidity and moments of authenticity in your actions, yet you would never allow for imperfection, or incompletion. Although the world to you is a rather abstracted entity lacking solid points of reference, I feel you still expect it to be a precise response to the shape of your thoughts. It cannot be just a contour; it needs to be an answer. The right answer, of course. Even if “right” is just a momentary constellation of disparate elements in an unstable space and time.

This text perhaps wouldn’t need to be so personal if the exhibition you are presenting at Art in General wasn’t a kind of a self-portrait. You’ve suffered from atopic skin condition since you were a kid. As I didn’t experience it myself, I know I cannot fully relate, although I accompanied a close friend through dozens of scratchy days and nights, better and worse periods, and related mood drops. You say you feel like it takes so much effort to just aggressively keep it together, to hold this pile of future dust in one place, not to fall apart. You made me read The Itch by Don DeLillo, as something that ties to your project. I copied a quote I thought I could use for the curatorial text, and would still like to paste it here, although it doesn’t really fit in the format I finally chose to write the text in. It goes:

He began to think of the itch as sense data from the exterior, caused by some outlying substance, unanalyzable, the air in the room or on the street or in the atmosphere itself, a corruption of the planetary environment. He thought of this but did not believe it. It was semi-science fiction. But it was also a form of comfort during those long periods of unrest when he was stretched and then curled and then belly down in bed, a raw body in cotton pajamas, awash in creams and lotions, trying not to scratch or rub.

There is a 1973 Czechoslovak TV fairy tale about a princess with golden hair falling in love with a “delivery boy”, who was supposed to bring her to his king. All of the kids, including you, were watching this in the post-communist Czech Republic and it’s still broadcasted as a family film every Christmas. Two powerful potions are being used in this story – the water of life and the water of death. As their names suggest, they are able to heal mortal wounds and resuscitate the dead. After using them, one would become even younger and more beautiful than before his or her injury or passing. When the vicious king gets hold of them exactly for that purpose, he forgets an important detail. He would need a companion to sprinkle the water of life on him after the water of death is applied – as the first step obviously paralyses the potion’s user and he cannot make the second step by himself. So as the story goes, the king dies and the princess with her lover takes over the kingdom. The derivatives of these potions have actually found their place in both alternative medicine and fancy cosmetics. You are developing your own take on them, and aiming to use them in the exhibition and the opening performance. I’m sure you would like to see them achieve the extreme. There is a thin boundary between healing and harming, and you know how to exercise it. Still you can be quite positive about always having someone around to pour the second potion for you, if necessary. As you are so engaging, the world won’t be just a passive contour to your performance. It will want to answer, perhaps even in the right way.

Karina Kottová (except from the curatorial text)

List of works:

Skin Come Leather, Vol. II
performance
Held on November 24, 2019 at 7 pm,
Art in General
Performed by Mimi Bahk, Lukas Hofmann, Mica Levine, Henry Neim Osman

Glands
polyester resin
2018

Into
glass, metal
2019

Life II
polyethylene net
2019

S. C. L.
video, 25 min.
2019

Saddle
metal, second-hand leather, plastic
2019

Water of Death*
Sphagnum, Aqua, Alcohol denat, Nardostachys jatamansi, Aquilaria malaccensis, Matricaria chamomilla, Acacia dealbata, Tilia cordata, Resina myrrhae, Myrtus communis, Boswellia sacra, Rosa damascena, Cedrus atlantica, Ocimum sanctum.
2019

Water of Life*
Alcohol denat, Aqua, Achillea millefolium, Cupressus sempervirens, Boswellia carterii, Citrus aurantium
2019

* Developed in cooperation with Petra Hlavata.

The multi-sensorial installation in the gallery space metaphorically stretches out and transforms skin into its urban counterpart: a scaffolding net. The stimuli in the exhibition bring only partial clues—do the climbing holds suggest past or future physical contact, strength or the lack of it? The tinctures of Water of Life and Death are involved in a mysterious process on the edge of medicine and witchcraft.

According to local mythology trickling through modern TV fairy tales that Hofmann grew up with in the post-communist Czech Republic, these liquids were to bring back the dead to life and heal wounds, respectively. Here they act as a fickle element, which might turn the tide of perception. Carried in ancient-like, yet hypermodern glass carafes designed by the artist in collaboration with the glassmaking company Lasvit, they carefully balance the line between realms of fetish, commercialized wellness and empowerment.

To Lukáš

You often stress that you are primarily a performance artist, although apparently you do like to see the fleeting moments somewhat materializing, while the exhibition environment either anticipates or prolongs the existence of performative events. Everything is arranged to be touched and manipulated with your particular sense for intensity and tension; all the surfaces and realities being there for one and only purpose, to create an exact negative space for the body in every possible position and scenario. The audience, the crew – your crew – is drawn in on various levels, invited to interact and evolve, but also carefully instructed about what would be the desirable form and outcome of their moves. You say there is a lot of space for fluidity and moments of authenticity in your actions, yet you would never allow for imperfection, or incompletion. Although the world to you is a rather abstracted entity lacking solid points of reference, I feel you still expect it to be a precise response to the shape of your thoughts. It cannot be just a contour; it needs to be an answer. The right answer, of course. Even if “right” is just a momentary constellation of disparate elements in an unstable space and time.

This text perhaps wouldn’t need to be so personal if the exhibition you are presenting at Art in General wasn’t a kind of a self-portrait. You’ve suffered from atopic skin condition since you were a kid. As I didn’t experience it myself, I know I cannot fully relate, although I accompanied a close friend through dozens of scratchy days and nights, better and worse periods, and related mood drops. You say you feel like it takes so much effort to just aggressively keep it together, to hold this pile of future dust in one place, not to fall apart. You made me read The Itch by Don DeLillo, as something that ties to your project. I copied a quote I thought I could use for the curatorial text, and would still like to paste it here, although it doesn’t really fit in the format I finally chose to write the text in. It goes:

He began to think of the itch as sense data from the exterior, caused by some outlying substance, unanalyzable, the air in the room or on the street or in the atmosphere itself, a corruption of the planetary environment. He thought of this but did not believe it. It was semi-science fiction. But it was also a form of comfort during those long periods of unrest when he was stretched and then curled and then belly down in bed, a raw body in cotton pajamas, awash in creams and lotions, trying not to scratch or rub.

This sounds a lot like you, the more likeable you. It might explain some of the restlessness, pushing, longing for relief that is present both in your art and your way of working. What is relief for you though? Is it success? Self-fulfillment? Do you ever itch during performances? Interestingly, DeLillo’s character stopped having the symptoms when a sexual encounter was about to happen. The body didn’t betray him in that moment. I thought your work represents similar tension between the itch and alleviation. It is always partly disturbing, and partly comforting.

Was it compassion, repulsion or attraction you felt at the tannery, where animal skin is being deprived of the rest of the once-alive being and turned into a commodity? Dead skin doesn’t itch anymore. I know it’s not solely the motif of violence, ethical boundaries or exploitation that made you connect those unnerving environments for the new video piece, but you probably cannot avoid others looking through this prism. Is it your personal battle with the skin, with your own immunity system, which you know works partly against you, that lay the grounds for this confrontation? Do you bite your audiences, leaving traces of your teeth on their wrists, in order to make them participate in your fight? Of course, it’s not just your own portrait of the artist as a young man that you are fighting for. The skin divides you from the rest of the world, but it is also the most intimate means through which you can connect. But you know you cannot bite people in the US, right?

There is a 1973 Czechoslovak TV fairy tale about a princess with golden hair falling in love with a “delivery boy”, who was supposed to bring her to his king. All of the kids, including you, were watching this in the post-communist Czech Republic and it’s still broadcasted as a family film every Christmas. Two powerful potions are being used in this story – the water of life and the water of death. As their names suggest, they are able to heal mortal wounds and resuscitate the dead. After using them, one would become even younger and more beautiful than before his or her injury or passing. When the vicious king gets hold of them exactly for that purpose, he forgets an important detail. He would need a companion to sprinkle the water of life on him after the water of death is applied – as the first step obviously paralyses the potion’s user and he cannot make the second step by himself. So as the story goes, the king dies and the princess with her lover takes over the kingdom. The derivatives of these potions have actually found their place in both alternative medicine and fancy cosmetics. You are developing your own take on them, and aiming to use them in the exhibition and the opening performance. I’m sure you would like to see them achieve the extreme. There is a thin boundary between healing and harming, and you know how to exercise it. Still you can be quite positive about always having someone around to pour the second potion for you, if necessary. As you are so engaging, the world won’t be just a passive contour to your performance. It will want to answer, perhaps even in the right way.

Karina Kottová (except from the curatorial text)