The Vast Life of Vladimír Kokolia, 1994, Prague Post, English

<small>Z Kokolia</small>

autor textu: Nichole McGill

The Vast Life of Vladimír Kokolia
Kokolia is a role model for the younger generation

týdeník Prague Post, 31.8.1994,

"Ordinary life is the vastest thing I could imagine," says artist Vladimir Kokolia, sitting in his "office" at his peaceful home in a south Moravian village. Books and acupuncture charts line the walls, and the raucous shouts of young boys playing with an enormous Great Dane are audible through the walls. Outside is Kokolia's studio, leading to an unfinished barn packed with hewn wood and bulky boxed canvases.

"Artists, philosophers and all those other parasites of reality, it's easy for them [to lead a tortured life]," he says. "It's part of a be-lief that artists are somewhere at the border crossing to the next region, that the real thing is happening there on the border. But it's right here."

This modesty is refreshing in someone who has been hailed as one of the most important Czech artists of his generation. In 1993, the 38-year-old painter was the only Czech artist invited to exhibit at Doku-menta '93, a prestigious exhibition of works by prominent contemporary European artists. Kokolia also divides his time between acting as front man for the underground band E and as a professor of painting at the Akademie vytvarnych umeni (AVU).

"Kokolia's importance is quite complex," says Ladislav Daniel, the recently ousted general director of Prague's National Gallery. "He's a very sensitive artist ... and he has been very much in touch with the mood of his time, beginning with his early, very expressive drawings."

But Kokolia may be better known among the younger generation because of his work with E. The three-man group has enjoyed some underground success in the past, but with their new album, I Adore Nothing, the band may be finding some new fans.

"E is like a hobby for us," explains guitarist Josef Ostransky. "From the beginning, we tried to play something new that we hadn't heard before."

This more casual approach to music-making also extends to promotion. The band relies more on word of mouth among their fans than on slick advertising. Their first cassette quietly appeared in select music stores in 1990, and without any publicity, still sold over 10,000 copies.

"We laugh at this new advertising phenomenon," says Kokolia. "We know we have to keep the personal image much stronger with our band."

The band members prefer smaller, more intimate venues where they can interact with the mood of the audience. Their performance relies as much on Koko-lia's visual role as on the experimental tones produced by Ostransky and bassist Vladimir Vaclavek. In concert, the two stand inconspicuously on raised platforms, producing a grind of menacing feedback. Koko-lia stands center stage, blinded with a foil band and responding to the music, alternating fluid Tai Chi movements with violent gyrations and an occasional scream.

"Usually I feel like I'm going to die there," Kokolia says, grinning.

E came about in 1986, when Ostransky and Vaclav-ek persuaded a reluctant Kokolia to replace violinist-vocalist Iva Bittova after reading some of Kokolia's poetry.

"We started rehearsals and it took four or five months for me to open my mouth," Kokolia remembers. He later incorporated his personal interest in Tai Chi "to support my lack of musicianship."

"For me [dancing] is like drawing, but in air. I actually like it better than ordinary drawing because there's no plane. It's 3-D. I have more than the tip of the pencil to work with."

Kokolia says the tone of his paintings has changed because of his musical outlet with E. "I don't have that feeling anymore to push and express myself or my opinions," Kokolia says. "Now my paintings can be relaxed and be just what they are. Not something else. I don't feel I have to enter the media [as a painter] and compete with other media and painters."

A recent exhibition of his paintings at JNJ Galerie (Nerudova 26) rejected art as self-expression in favor of the visceral effect of repetitive ornamental motifs.

"I asked him if there were any titles for the paintings. He said, 'yes,' but it wasn't important," says an assistant at JNJ Galerie. "I think there are titles, but only in his head."

"There can be something so perfectly contained, a structure complete and perfect at all times," explains Kokolia. "I think that a painting works without a viewer. It is a self-supporting, self-contained structure."

"[Kokolia] has an anti-academic way of painting," says Daniel. "It's important that he isn't a classical painter. That way he can be an inspiration to his students."

Kokolia's success is a bit of a wonder, considering his claim that he never visited galleries with his portfolio. "Czech artists were spoiled," he says. "The communists fed us well to keep us silent."

Still, in many of his early drawings, there seems to be a clear statement about the oppression of the political regime: A figure munches on a fresh slice of his brain, freshly cut like a piece of watermelon; four diligent workers hammer another cross over a giant crucified figure; an emancipated figure hangs by a noose on a pulley, pulling the rope so he will inevitably be crushed. Kokolia admits that looking back on his drawings, his message about oppression is obvious, but he emphasizes this was not his conscious intent.

"There was a catharsis in [drawing these pictures] that makes obvious the mechanism in it," says Koko-lia. "I would never dare to think I could change communism with a tiny drawing. I always thought it was better to fight as a citizen."

The same attitude applied to E. "Our lyrics were [purposefully] never anti-communist. They were just about ordinary life."

Despite a publicity release for their new CD and a promotion campaign more in line with other pop acts, Kokolia isn't expecting the fan base of E to grow substantially. In fact, between painting and teaching, and with Ostransky and Vaclavek pursuing individual projects, the band will strive to maintain its grassroots following.

Wide touring and promotion are still clearly not E's biggest priority, and serendipity remains the guide of this band, which Kokolia describes as "based on family."