by
Olga Malá
Veronika
Bromová ranks among
the protagonists of the “new
wave” in Czech
art, the dynamic generation of the 1990s. These young artists, the majority of whom completed their studies in Prague at the newly-free Academy of
Fine Arts or
the University of Applied Arts after
the “Velvet
Revolution”, have already gained considerable acclaim both domestically and abroad. The
visual and
semantic codes of their works
are an integral
part of contemporary themes in European art, yet at the
same time
their works retain
a strong force
of individual expression,
and reflect
the singular experience
of the Czech
genius loci. The second
half of the
90s has been a period of
steep ascent for Veronika Bromová,
both in the
context of her generation as a whole, and in its particularly
powerful female
core.
Bromová’s
series of
monumental photographs from 1996 entitled Views caused quite a stir among
the public at
large and art critics
alike. After
its premiere at
“Urban Legends” at
the Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden, the
series was
featured at other
exhibitions, including
“Close Echoes” in Prague and at
the
Kunsthalle in Krems. Individual photographs from this series
were published
in Flash Art and Village Voice, as well as in the catalogue from
the exhibition
“The Quick and
the Dead”,
organized by the Hayward Gallery, London. This series, in which Bromová uses computer manipulation to “cut” portions of
skin from naked
bodies, creating almost drastic photographs as a result, is a specific contribution
to the theme
of human anatomy that has appeared in a number of exhibitions
recently, often
presented in connection with other social
issues (i.e.
feminism). The photographs, in which the artist is
her own main
model, are not so shocking
in their display of the naked external
body, as in their “view”
of female anatomy, the body laid brutally
bare and stripped
of its skin in the most intimate and sensitive of places, in a manner more common to medical anatomy books. Their emotional
impact is
enhanced by the contrast between the stark objectivity
of the depicted
internal organs
and the expressive
manner in which
the women are portrayed
“opened up”
- screaming portraits, legs spread apart,
wide open
mouths.
Bromová is
a pioneer in the field of
digitally-altered
photography in the Czech Republic; the computer collages
in Views
developed from her previous experience in this medium. Initially she worked with
old photographs
and pictures clipped
from fashion
magazines, newspapers and advertisements, reshaping them using a method similar to that of classical collage.
This was
the technique employed
in Photoamputation-Photoimplantation
(1993), a project inspired
by the world
of advertising. The artist used
motifs from
United Colours of Benetton ads
for her own play
on absurd commutations of race and
sex. She embarked
further on this road of experimentation
when she
began photographing herself and systematically
altering the
results on her computer. Her first exhibition of computer montage
was a work
entitled Also Girls (“Biennial of
Young Artists - The Bell ´94”, Prague City Gallery) which was connected to the issue of
sexual identity.
The
artist’s computer art, which she describes as “unpainted paintings”, demonstrate her preoccupation with the figurative
theme; her favourite
models are people close to her but predominantly herself. Although myriad forms of photography
serve as the basis for her art, from
the very
outset Bromová has also been attracted to expanding two-dimensional
photography into
spatial objects, as was clear in her use of various platforms
and podiums
in her early works. By the late 1990s she began incorporating
autonomous three-dimensional objects into installations, granting them “equal rights” with
photographs, and
thus complementing her photography both semantically and in terms of their
impact on the
senses.
Bromová produced
her first substantial “global” installation at her solo exhibition at the Prague
City Gallery (1997), entitled
On the
Edge of the
Horizon. Its
theme is that
of isolation
and the difficulty
of mutual
communication. Bromová attempts
to capture the
boundary between two worlds, one
which can
be understood rationally
and one
that is
transcendental, and which in her understanding has a cosmic dimension. She approaches the theme of the
total dissimilarity
of possible extraterrestrials
- foreigners whose
isolation, as she sees it, would
not be much different
from those human
beings who
in fact live among
us, but
whom we
refuse to accept because they are somehow “dissimilar”.
Her most recent
installations are conceived
as an integrated whole, combining photographs and kinetic objects
covered in variously-coloured feathers. Zemzoo, the latest installation, and the work
presented at
the Venice Biennial,
features an
additional video projection. The concept of
Zemzoo, relating to
mistaken identities and undermining the accepted boundaries
between freedom
and bondage, further
examines the
specific relationship between the human
and animal
worlds, so infinitely
remote yet
sufficiently close, and offers the
possibility of
the switching of
their roles.
Just as in the installation Beauty and the Beast
(Czech Centre, Paris) and
her upcoming project
Metamorphosis, we find here
connections to Bromová’s previous
work - the
presentation of human carnality and its various
aspects observed
without their widespread
taboos. The
artist is primarily
concerned with
the negation of
prejudices against
other races, women,
and, on another
level, also against
aversions resulting
from human “otherness”
and unalterable
biological determination.