David Cajthaml (CZ) & Buddy Ungrad (CZ)
Nina Jassingerová
Thursday, May 3, 2018, 6.30 PM
Exhibition opening:
A Sync at the Psychiatrist's
A Sync at the Psychiatrist's is an exhibition that is a direct result of several events that have been synchronised in time.
A Sync at the Psychiatrist's is an exhibition that is a direct result of several events that have been synchronised in time. Between Spring 2016 and Summer 2017, the curator of the exhibition had been having a difficult time dealing with personal losses and the subsequent depressions. She started to use the virtual world of a social network to take in (thoughtlessly, but intensely) the daily works of the artist David Cajthaml and the poet Buddy Ungrad. At the same time, over the course of a year, she regularly attended the psychiatrist's office that seemed to resemble a gallery. David Cajthaml's daily published images included poetic texts subtitled "at the psychiatrist's". The character of the psychiatrist is a kind of a catalyst (some times in the position of the subject, another times of the object), that enables us to fully – immensely perform the tragic comedy of all of our life projections, transferences, big and small traumas, desires, feelings and emotions, whether fulfilled, unfulfilled or lost. Buddy Ungrad's comments enriched them with wit and another layer of meaning. At the time, he was also in the process of publishing his poetry that reflected upon grief, losses, destroyed or unfulfilled loves.
All of the experiences, creative work and observation took place in the tear of time where there was no space, time, nor causality. Especially while looking back, there are three main focal points that stand out in front of the bottomless and widespread darkness. They are linked with invisible threads that can be used to sew wounded souls. The three points consist of the images, poetry and the psychiatrist. What used to be just an echo of a lifelong and professional interest of the curator (the inseparable link between art, therapy and other things that helped her to choose her unfocused perception above everything else) resulted not just into a therapy method, but also into a creative output which is this very exhibition.
The fictional space that encompasses the freely and gratuitously clustering poems, texts and images is the Ship of Fools. The allegorical image was originally used by Plato in regard to state government and it can now be referred to as archetypal. It is no longer just a description of Plato's twisted society, but also a metaphor of life, shaken by sea currents, waves, storms and deep waters of the unconsciousness. And suddenly, in your liminal[1] state, after the loss of your loved ones, health and job, you realise you have spent almost a year looking poetically at David Cajthaml's tales of fools and psychiatrists in the virtual space of the social network, while in the real life you kept attending the psychiatrist's office-gallery where you spent your time looking at the drawings of rope knots, lighthouses and seashells, until you realised that the psychiatrist was also a sea captain…
I agree with David Cajthaml that reality usually takes over fantasy. And what looks like a metaphor or allegory does actually happen. It can knock us down, heal us, make us happy or kill us. And that is life. Nobody can escape it. Only art gives us the opportunity to reorder and restock reality and use it to explore the usually hidden – like the synchronicities[2], and give it a new meaning in order to survive.
David Cajthaml graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. He studied at the Studio of Architecture and Scenography under prof. Josef Svoboda. He is a multilateral artist who focuses on drawing, painting, printmaking, scenography and music. Among others, he worked with Arnošt Goldflam on his plays the Masochist and the Maniac where he composed the music, designed the stages and posters. He is the frontman of the Dekadent Fabrik music band.
Buddy Ungrad is a pseudonym of a "prairie poet" as he calls himself and whose identity remains unknown. He is a lawyer, journalist, businessman, lobbyist, in the post positive meaning of the word, who lives "with cats in a stronghold" – that is what we know about his from public sources. And there is also a brief mention of him by Bohumil Hrabal, who used to share both his literary inclinations and Prague living quarters with him.
[1] Liminality is a term introduced by Victor Turner in 1977 in order to describe the spacetime that is used to recreate the identity of a person who just lost a loved one or loved ones. Just like in this case, death is not necessarily the cause of the loss.
[2] Synchronicity is a term described by C. G. Jung that specifies a tear in time, invalidates spacetime, time, causality and is similar to numinous states of spiritual experience. It describes two or more events happening at the same time that do not share causation, but rather have the same or similar meaning.
Exhibition views:
The exhibition has been supported using public funds provided by Slovak Arts Council. The Council is the leading partner of the project.