Luděk Rathouský

As a painter Luděk Rathouský examines current artistic and social issues. His free style and tendency towards a comics-based depiction of events or states lightens more serious preoccupations, such as commentaries on the mass media, the depiction of violence in contemporary society, the recycling of the values of Christian legacy, and a critique of production and the commerciality of art. A cunning irony forms a connecting point between the visual form of the work and its conceptual purpose.

Drawing using gel pen, pencil, spray paintings on paper or computer become the internal axis for thematically organised pictures. In most of his works we find an unrelenting fascination with evil and the monarchy as the means to its transformation. While the cycle of spray drawings History of Violence II uses fanciful condensation, in the older cycle Flood the artist attempts to remain closer to reality. In his computer drawings (e.g. Grippen, Holy or Salt Lake), which inhabit a grey area between black humour and artwork, Rathouský displays elements of evil with great emotional distance. In works such as Bloody Sunday I and II or Crossroads the artist addresses the issue of traffic accidents. All of these collections link fear with the enchantment which flows from the constant presence of the end, of the body and of power, as well as of the identifiable.

The cycle entitled Performance, which captures the duplicity of reality, has a special status within his work. He documented performances of the work (some on the initiative of the Rafani Group, of which Rathouský was co-founder) in the form of an independent large-format picture, which created a media parallel between his experience of the event and the joint video recording.

Probably the most intensive pictures are those which are resigned to social topicality and immerse themselves in the artist’s emotional world. Using various techniques, expressiveness created by the luminous atmosphere or unidentified objectives Rathouský organises the external mood of a picture. He allows its internal logic be heard by means of simple spatial schemas, which as well as a self-proclaimed idea have a symbolic character.