VLADIMIR HOUDEK

Determined by geometric forms, Houdek’s works move between abstraction and the representational. He uses a language of forms that is familiar to us from our everyday lives. In addition to classic basic shapes such as circle, triangle and square, Houdek integrates ‘real’ objects such as bows, keys and clamps into his compositions. Through a strongly reduced colour spectrum, his typical use of light and shadow, as well as the principle of repetition, he transforms these objects into formal structures that seem to float in the pictorial space. Released from their usual context, his compositions open up spaces for association. The observer is encouraged to critically question the objective and to challenge traditional contexts of meaning. Vladimír Houdek shows in his work that changes in form and perspective, as well as shifts in meaning ultimately can lead to renegotiations of reality. Inspired by a new primitivism, in his works he provokes a break with reality that deprives things of their meaning and only grants symbols of abstraction. The artist moves between utopia and dystopia. The idea of deconstructing social reality, the pursuit of new knowledge and the potential of a new beginning through shifts in meaning are profound considerations that the artist unites in his creative process. Houdek follows artificialism in his work. A style that does not claim to be a reality, but follows a poetry that describes the interstices of the figurative. His imagery fills the gaps between real spaces and the void that radiates reality.

The film titled Labyrinth is an outcome of a six-year long cooperation between the choreographer Hana Polanská Turečková and the painter Vladimír Houdek. During their cooperation, these artists create film or stage collages-combinations of paintings and dance which strive to define the relationship between the language of visual artistic rendering and movements of body.

Vladimír Houdek was born in 1984 in Nové Město na Moravě, Czech Republic, and lives and works in Prague. Houdek studied painting at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Vladimir Skrepl. In 2010, he has been awarded the Price of Art Critique for Young Painting, Prague, followed by the Jindřich Chalupecký Award in 2012.

Selected Solo and Group Exhibitions:

2019: Future Polis II, GAVU Cheb, Czech Republic (SE), Künstlerverein Malkasten, Düsseldorf, Germany (SE), GaP, Znojmo, Czech Republic (SE), What Are We Made Of?, Works from Art Collection Telekom, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Germany (GE), 2018: Painting, The Horácká Gallery in Nové Město na Moravě, Czech Republic (SE), 2017: Resonanz, Kunstpalais Erlangen, Erlangen, Germany (SE), Vladimír Houdek, The Opava House of Art, Czech Republic (SE), Half-Truth, Works by Central and Eastern European Contemporary Artists from Art Collection Telekom, Museum of Sculpture-Królikarnia Palast, Warsaw, Poland (GE), Lübeck sammelt I, Von Max Beckmann bis Miroslav Tichý, Kunsthalle St. Annen, Lübeck, Germany (GE), 2016: Levitationen, Mönchehaus Museum für moderne Kunst, Goslar, Germany (SE)

Former Exhibitions—Galerie Krinzinger/Krinzinger Projekte: (2016) Relationen, Galerie Krinzinger, Showroom