Aleš Čermák

Up till now Aleš Čermák’s style could be described, somewhat simply, as the poetics of social forms. He has explored this theme in performance, literature and conceptual work with text. As well as gallery installations, performances and video, over the last few years he has experimented with a theatrical format. At present many of his projects could be placed within the context of experimental theatre. His literary output includes both writing and publishing as part of the project Ausdruck Books (since 2010).

Čermák often touches upon the social and political problems of the contemporary world and the position of the individual in it. However, his work is not merely the rehashing of easily derived propositions, such as is to be found in much contemporary “engaged” art. The relationship between form and content, both in his creative process and in the expressive elements of his work, is explored in a free yet dynamic way. Over the last few years he has gradually formed a firmer aesthetic that more and more finds its feet in the sphere of staged productions.   

As regards the traditional exhibition format an example would be Zamilovaný Hérakleitos / Heraclitus in Love (2012), in which with characteristic lightness of touch he played with the swapped roles of the gender paradigm of art history, portraying an active female creative subject and a passive position of man as theme and object. His project for the final of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award entitled Starý svět už nedává smysl a nový ještě nenastal / The Old World No Longer Makes Sense and the New One Has Not Yet Come About (2013) combined several aspects of his practice. As well as an installation containing a host of references to the theme in question, the main outputs included a publication freely available in situ with a text by the artist, and an organised reading in the gallery realised from the project budget by paid unemployed people. His book Pes nadbíhá kličkujícímu zajíci / A Dog Chasing a Zigzagging Hare (2013) was his final project at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. This literary essay both conveys information conventionally while also being a self-reflecting conceptual form of such a book as cultural model. 

In his concept of theatre, which was to be seen, for instance, in the cycle Občan a věc / The Citizen and the Thing (2013–14), Čermák draws on both performance art and contemporary post-dramatic theatre. He combines different components such as project, readings or acted commentary, the participation of musicians, etc. in the spirit of intermedia. This is not a theatrical unity synthesised by a director. It is more a kind of collage in which the artist places both contradictory and equal elements in confrontation. An important aspect in his performances and theatre work is his interest in choreography as a simulacrum of the social systems by which the contemporary body is controlled. To this end he collaborates with professionals in the sphere in question. A typical example of such cooperation is Pro začátek můžeme znovu zformulovat náročný systém podmínek pro kladnou odpověď typu: Ano! Opravdový život je přítomnost / To Start With We can Reformulate a Demanding System of Conditions for a Positive Response of the Type: Yes! Real Life is Presence (2013), involving three dancers performing a demanding, unstable variation that paraphrases the mutual existential interdependencies of the individual in society.

Čermák’s work is perhaps the most interesting example of a creative aesthetic accentuating within an international context the current intertwining of the visual arts and theatre. His concept of the book as a another non-gallery form within contemporary art occupies a similarly important position.