Aleš Veselý: Permanence and Inertia

DOX Centre for Contemporary Art presents three sculptures by Czech sculptor Aleš Veselý. You and I and Those Who Are No More, Entrance into Code andNarrow Slot are examples of the author´s current work.

On the sculpture terrace  is an object entitled Narrow Slot. A large white ball is trapped in a massive steel drum. The distance between the ball´s perfect surface and  the inner surface of the drum creates a narrow fissure of light.  A set of three metal cones, You and I and Those Who Are No More, on the opposite side,  is a concentrated focal point of force fields. The object entitled Entrance into Code, set in the middle of the courtyard, represents Veselý´s recurring theme of a gate, many variations of which appear in his sculptures, drawings and texts.

There is a common denominator  for all exhibited works. It is the direct experience of a mystery of an intangible reach of the transcendental universe. The formal monumental nature of Veselý´s sculptures leads paradoxically to the opposite effect – the discreet experience of an invisible but even more real world.

Sculptor Aleš Veselý has been one of the most important figures of the Czech art scene for more than fifty years. He was born in 1953 in Čáslav, studied graphics at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts, where he has taught since 1990. During his artistic career, he has participated in more than fifty solo exhibitions and over one hundred group exhibitions both in the Czech Republic and abroad and he received many awards for his work. Aleš Veselý's work is represented in the collections of well-known art institutions all over the world (among others The Solomon Guggenheim Museum - New York, Centre Georges-Pompidou - Paris,  Sculpture Collection in the Olympic Park - Soul and the National Gallery in Prague). Aleš Veselý lives and works in Prague and Středokluky.

"Stillness is pernicious but inertia is eternal. Both seem to be identical, although in their essence they are also fatally different. Stillness is static, it has no beginning or end, while inertia is dynamic, since it conceals within it many layers of meaning and represents the confluence of the past and the future."