Jana Bernartová

Jana Bernartová passed through several different studios during her studies. She began her tertiary education at the Faculty of Art and Architecture of the Technical University in Liberec at the Visual Communication – Digital Media studio led by Stanislav Zippe. She then completed her master’s degree at the Václav Stratil intermedia studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Brno University of Technology (FAVU), and received a doctorate from the Federico Díaz Supermedia studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague (UMPRUM). The time she spent at university in Liberec was formative, since it provided her with a background against which she could work with the most up-to-date technology and acquire a knowledge of its possibilities and limits. It is the error in the virtual world, the ghost in the machine, the tension between the virtual world and lived reality, between data and its tangible outputs, that form the central themes of Bernartová’s work to date. Although she works mainly with the digital image, her work is often intended for gallery presentation and is characterised by a broad intellectual backdrop. Bernartová often develops one theme for several years within a single cycle or series of works. These then often resemble academic research projects investigating human perception in relation to the digital image. The artist wants to ask what demands the transformation of media or the carriers of visual information place on the perceptual apparatus of the observer. She is also interested in how our relationship with the image or fine art changes under the influence of the latest media. It is communication with the world of contemporary art, which she enters not only in the role of artist, but also as curator and lecturer, that forms one of the ever-present layers of her work. For many years she has been art director of the Prague gallery Kvalitář. At present Bernartová divides her time between Prague and her hometown of Liberec. Since 2016 she has been curator and organiser of the international festival Art Week Liberec. At the Faculty of Art and Architecture of the Technical University of Liberec she leads the creative studio of architecture students.  

Turning our attention to her oeuvre, we might call the past two years the artist’s “blue period”. In the long-term project Tekuté krystaly R0G0B255 / Liquid Crystals R0G0B255 (2016–2018) she investigated the properties and possibilities of digital colour. She was alerted to this topic by the basic blue colour of the RGB colour spectrum, the colour emitted by projectors and certain monitors in the default setting or power saving mode, the technical parameters of a precisely defined colour shade for which we have not found a suitable verbal description, since all comparisons include imprecision, just as the resulting perception of the viewer is dependent on the type and quality of the display unit. It is this aspect that Bernartová decided to examine in a series of installations gradually exploring the imaging possibilities of different media (photography, computer monitor, mobile phone display, television screen) – visual information storage devices and providers.

The beginning of the series of projects devoted to digital blue was the exhibition Tekuté krystaly R0G0B255 (2017) at the Galéria Plusmínusnula Gallery in Žilina, Slovakia. Bernartová conceived this as an interactive installation based on a projection of basic blue that reacts to the entry of visitors into the exhibition space. The accompanying booklet printed in the same shade played an important role. The exhibition was completed by a radical intervention in the public space of the main square in Žilina, which can in many respects be perceived as a monument (to the colour) of the digital age, which avails itself fully of its basic mimicry. With the agreement of the operator of a large city light, the screen intended for advertisements shone a basic digital blue for several days. In contrast, Bernartová based the minimalist installation Výchozí nastavení / Default Setting (2017) at the gallery Altán Klamovka on a more intimate encounter with RGB mediated by the form of the plotter (a printer for printing vector graphics), computer monitor and digital print on paper.

At the exhibition Červená jako Ferarri / Red as a Ferrari (2017) Bernartová decided to present the red of the RGB colour spectrum on monitor, photographs, prints and laser.  Through her paintings she also introduced the physical equivalent of digital red, a pigment in rosso corsa, the colour she painted the rooms of the gallery. However, the “tone in tone” installation, under the influence of the imaging capabilities of individual data storage devices and the effect of light, was transformed into an unexpectedly varied colour chart. While in other projects related to the theme of digital colour Bernartová intentionally left the content of colours to one side, this time she allowed the meanings of certain colours seep into her work more. The title of the exhibition touched on the issue of treating colour as a marketing tool and its ability to induce in the observer a certain feeling by means of the trademark.

Individual presentations devoted to digital blue and red can be seen as a partial comparison of the different ways of conveying specific information, and also as trials leading to the creation of a complex colour environment that the viewer has the opportunity to step inside. In many of these presentations the artist decided to introduce ultramarine into the game, the closest equivalent to default blue in physical form and a hue used for centuries and possessing many historical, social and religious meanings. Moreover, this blue is linked with digital blue by an interesting paradox, namely the impossibility of reproducing it in printed form. The installation Ultramarín extra blue / Ultramarine Extra Blue (2017) created for the Galerie Kaplička in Jablonec nad Nisou was based on an imaginary battle between digital colour mediated by RGB light and pigment in its physical form, in which the role of arbitrator was taken by light.

Bernartová continued to work on the relationship between colour and light in the exhibition ~ 430–500 nm, ~ 700–600 THz that took place at the start of 2018 at the Blansko City Gallery, at which she presented a series of photographs in lightboxes and a large-format projection. Photographs from the cycle Remediation (2017) can be seen as a series of double portraits of imaginary rivals, namely digital colours and pigment. Adjustment to the lightboxes not only multiplies their overall visual effect but introduces light as an element that has a fundamental influence on the resulting perception. By means of this method of presentation Bernartová accentuated the transformation of the image, i.e. the original visual information, by means of multiple transmission. She took this to an extreme via a pair of parallel exhibitions. A record of the pigment projected in Blankso was broadcast by webcam live to the internet ScreenSaverGallery presenting contemporary digital art by means of screen savers that can be easily downloaded. This then appeared on a monitor in the Vitrína Deniska Gallery in Olomouc for the duration of the Blansko exhibition and depending on its opening hours. Bernartová thus closed a media loop in which the original, visually cleaned image was transformed by multiple transmission via different media into a “live” environment attacking the viewer’s imagination. 

While in the presentation Hyperloop (2018) given at Vitrína Deniska the viewer could only watch on a computer monitor, in the multiple projection Možnosti zobrazení / Display Options (2018) created a few months later for the Prague NoD gallery, Bernartová now brings the viewer into an environment modified by colour and light. The exhibition is thus more an “optical-sensory calibration of space” rather than a traditional exhibition of a projected video image.

The visually captivating installations in shades of (not only) blue are not simply places of remediational experimentation. Deviations and errors arising from the transform from one medium to another and the inability of current media to transmit specific visual information in unaltered form from the virtual to the real world led Bernartová to examine in detail the possibilities and limits of reproductive technologies. However, she also reflects not only on the influence that these data storage devices have on the transformation of our perception of visual information, but also on the change to the way we perceive the artwork and art in general. 

The question of how to define an artwork with the available technology or its presentation, and its interpretation through a particular medium and format, is another theme that Bernartová has long been addressing in her work. While in the installation Poměr / Ratio (2016, Galerie SPZ, Prague) the focus was on mass produced hanging picture frames and basically the absurd requirement to seal the visual message within a production format, the project Parametrická digitální struktura / Parametric Digital Structure returns to the (im)possibility of the faithful transfer of image/information from the virtual sphere into physical form and thus to the ongoing presence of error. The impulse for this cycle was receipt of an email containing incorrect data. Bernartová transferred the visual information obtained by opening the course code of the message by means of the operating system into the form of large-format digital prints, many of which she presented at the end of 2018 at the exhibition Nula jedna / Zero One at the Regional Art Gallery Liberec.

In the different material designs of the prints she pointed to the different expressive possibilities of individual materials in relation to the original digital structure. Also present was an interest in the digital interpretation of colours, their interrelationship within the overall structure of the work, and a certain visual attractiveness of the data outputs, i.e. themes accentuated by the previously cycle Chyby – Kvadratické systémy / Errors – Quadratic Systems (2005–2008). As Václav Janoščík, who wrote the accompanying text, observed: “When we look at individual images, textures and lines, we can easily slip into an emphasis on formalism and perhaps even succumb to their beauty. However, formalism and abstract art are at present taking on a new character and significance. It is no longer about a beauty and abstraction that seek autonomous, attractive shapes and forms. What we are looking at has, above all, an additional layer in digital code, data, as well as in the emails themselves. Abstraction on paper corresponds to the abstraction of contemporary communications technology and the power of algorithms.” This series of prints also highlights the strong resonance between data and its material outputs, the connections between the sensed, intangible processes of digital technology that accompany every step we take, and the influence they have on our lived reality. The unfathomability of these processes consists, inter alia, in the barely conceivable volume of data flows and the miniature size of the source information. Bernartová accentuates these aspects by means of the monumental format of the prints, which is radical contrast to its data sources.

However, she had already focused on the inability of humankind to conceive of the processes related to the operation of digital media in her master’s dissertation Arktická krajina v České republice / The Arctic Landscape in the Czech Republic (2009–2010), an original computer program generating a gradually changing image over time. This, presented in the form of a projection, deliberately placed exaggerated demands on the viewer’s perception and time, thus highlighting the inability of humankind to comprehend in its entirety certain processes, be they natural or those being played out in the virtual sphere.

The unfathomability of virtual reality, this time in terms of unlimited data flows, was also the topic of Bernartová’s dissertation – the cycle Generování textů o generativním umění / The Generation of Texts on Generative Art (2010–2017). In one of the few projects in its early phase focussing on the virtual sphere in the form of the platform TheText.info, the artist and a team of specialists created an artificial intelligence that absorbs information and then generates texts related to the theme of generative art and new media. This work also accentuated the element of the infinite in the form of an individual confronted by an inexorable inflow of information, distorted by reality and the (im)possibility of orientation within it and within the infinite virtual space. Bernartová developed these aspects in partial presentations and performances focusing on the confrontation of artificial and human intelligence.

At the exhibition Turingův test v podmínkách imitační hry / The Turing Test under the Conditions of an Imitation Game (2013) at the gallery Kvalitář the artist had a pair of LED displays run a specialist text by media theorist Lev Manovič and texts on generative art being generated by the artist’s own software. She thus tested the viewer’s attention and their ability to distinguish. On a set of scales she measured the (in)ability and (im)perfection of humankind and artificial intelligence as performance units that only bring value added to their work to a limited degree. By means of an ongoing timer in the installation she again highlights the impossibility of conceiving of the flow of data and time in its complexity. In the follow-up performance Almost Human accompanying the exhibition Koriandrový tunel / Coriander Tunnel (2014), by means of a public reading of generated texts from the archive of the platform TheText.info, she examined questions concerning the legitimisation of the generated text (in the broader context of the results of the activities of an artificial entity) through public interpretation. In this work too the theme of media as data carrier and mediator of information arises, albeit from a slightly different perspective.

As is clear, from the very start of her artistic career, Jana Bernartová has devoted herself to digitalisation as one of the characteristic aspects of contemporary society, which, inter alia, has had a profound impact on the way we perceive contemporary visual art. Her artistic activities have been informed by her interest in digital data in the form of an invisible system, but also by its visual interpretation by means of different media. As she herself says: “Across changing formats and media, my work retains its fascination with the unfathomability of the moment and the incomprehensibility of the infinite.”  

Jozef Cseres - Jana Horáková - Václav Janoščík - Andrea Průchová Hrůzová: Jana Bernartová / Nula jedna, Liberec 2018.

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