Milan Houser’s creative process is defined primarily by studies of material conditions (the core) for the painting process, his intense interest in light and its effects, and the thematic relationship between photography and painting. His pictures are similar to shadow-type objects, characterised by their expansive format, fascinating in their expressive resources of painting and contrarily for their absence of brush technique or the complicated building of colour composition or innuendo. His obsession with the physical quality of colour and his research of space are evident above all in the installation, Pictures Reflections / Obrazy odrazy. For this project the gallery space was vertically divided by transparent large-format Plexiglas sheets that the artist doused in pearl-like synthetic colours. He later reworked these hanging sheet pictures, which were also part of the project, using a so-called American retouch method and thus created a monochromatic painting, a material abstraction.
Milan Houser first presented his experiments with colour at the Bootstrap exhibit. Prior to this event he had completed a series of images using the same technology called Revers. This concerned a visually-conservative development of shape games for light and shadow; for example, in the moving branches of trees, reflections off water surfaces, the shadow of an electric post. In his older monumental 3D works Space / Prostor and Globe / Koule, Milan Houser attempted to explore the possibility of living (in a) space. This artist’s most recent project Vanitas consists of five Venetian mirrors on which motifs of weapons have been engraved – shells, grenades, machine-guns – but also human skulls, that become a sort of floral arabesque – through decoration. Here the engravings create a juxtaposition to symbols of beauty and prosperity with those of death and killing.
Studies:
1993-2000 Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, studio of monumental art of Aleš Veselý
1985-1989 Faculty of education, Masaryk University in Brno
Stipends and symposiums:
2010 Bánská stanica
2007 Art Symposium Mikulov
Centre Européen d'Actions Artistiques Contemporaines, Strasbourg, France
2005 Stipendist of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation
1998 Kagoshima, Japan
Awards:
2000 Cena rektora AVU
Stipendist of the Foundation Jana and Milan Jelínek
Mikolášek Martin, Tekutost v perleti, A2 kultruní týdeník 17/ 2006, s. 9
Netopil Pavel, Litky Milana Housera, A2 kultruní týdeník 13/ 2008, s. 8