Book: Jozef Sedlák Carnival God's children Kardinál Korec Still with us
 
Jozef Sedlak: Karenval

HOMO LUDENS

To me as an art historian, the term "carnivala not only evokzes the carnivals in Rio or Venice, but aLso the mascarades on the pictures of the Belgian .James Ensorfrom the fin de siecLe era, in which the carnival frenzy is shiJted to painful, cruelly existential levels~ as well as the work of Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (1727-1804), the undervalued son of a morejamous artist, who worked in the final period of the Venetian Republic, in the atmosphere of a society before catas­trophe. He intel'preted the Italian commedia dell'arte with a very disturbing accent; presenting people in masks as real demons. l also consistently.find that not only lightness of being, but aLso a heavy burden of the hardships of Life, in the remarkable artistic work of the photographerJozef Sedlák, who - motivated by a de­sire to grasp hidden meanings - confronts photos from carnivals from very different environments. From 1989 to 1993, he photographed carnivaLs at the institute.for handicapped children in Bratislava, and from 1994 to 1997, the Venice carnival.

For me, the idea of Venice includes my own metaphysical experiences with the melancholic Venice of Thomas Mann and Luchino Visconti ("Death in Venice"), the melodramatic Venice of Henry James ("The Papers of Aspern"), the Gothic Venice of Edgar Allan Poe ("The Assignation"), Jozef Sedlak: Karenval the sentimental painter, Venice of Dominik Skutecký or the post modern Venice of Woody Allen ("Everone says: l love you aj What does an objective document have in common with these subjective conceptions? Nothing at all, until the moment when one documentary photograph is confronted with another and they arefused into a single work of art. From the methodological point of view, Sedlák's creative method can be called (auto) recycling and the result is an artistic recycled work. Such a strategy was already used by .liN Kolár in

1952, but he arranged wholesfrom other peoples'photographs. From two or more pictures, he creates a composition with an ironic, grotesque or tragicomic aim in the work "Deserted Land': a devastated interior and a superb castle park are placed next to each other; in the work "Sleeper" shepherds havefallen asleep and piles of bones in open coffins also sleep. Peter Župník already created diptychsfrom his own photographs in Slovakia in the 1980s~ but starting from the impulses of poetism and surrealism. But let us return to Sedlák's pictures. Photographs from the Venice series, with their overcrowdedness and fantasmagoricness with a pa th ological accent recall joel Peter Witkin, with a concentration on a society of disturb ed people, while the method of constructing compositions also evokes the work of Diana Arbus. The idea on its own of confronting events in a home for handicapped children and in a decadent, excited worldly city has a slightly blasphemous and characturing undertone, but the fact that the same events are involved, points to the specific artist's intentions, and directs our considerations in an entirely different direction.

Since individual diptychs are formed mainly on the basis offormal and compositional afJinity, it is also essential to deal with emotional and content inversion. This can be seen very well in the case of two diptychs, which 1 regard as the most successful of the series. Jozef Sedlak: Karenval In the first of them, a child in a wheelchair grips a revolver in his hand, while in the Venetian counterpart a masked .figure waves a sword. In the second diptych, a girl in a wheelchair is confronted with a bizarre figure of a transvestite, provided with various artiflciallegs, sitting on a stone pedestal. If in the first work, the presence of a weapon puts a militant spirit into an environment of complete defencelessness, thefigure of the man with a sword acquires a surprisingly infantile character.

If the powerless girl in the wheelchair evokes a strong impression of mobility, the absurdity of the carnival mask of the transvestite also speaks of a sort of powerlessness. We suddenly learn that the individual photographs do not have only their theme and elements of their compositional structure in common, but they are also internally connected to each other by ties of secret a:ffznity, which becomes the key to grasping their deepest meaning Jozef Sedlak: Karenval Every activity caught on the photographs is motivated by an agonizing cleansing cathartic e:ffort to achieve the materialization of an illusion or idea!. By putting on a mask, a person actually uncovers, frees and cleanses himself. The fact that the method of realization of catharsis has such a remarkably similar form in the behaviour of two so different groups of people (the whole of Sedlák 's series is based on emphasizing precisely this aspect), relativizes the concepts of normality and abnormality. An entertaining game with jorms or compositional forms imperceptibly 0verlaps with an in direct pointing to what is in man and his generally human essence. Sedlák 's carnival series speaks of dignity and selfCrespect, about the possibilities oťhuman existence. To be or to appear? That is the question. That is life and that is art about life.

In 1937, the Dutch philosopherJohann Huyzing, in his essay "Homo ludens" (Playing person), suggested that to an incalculable degree the play principIe determines the nature of the activity of the person and social relationships, and that it is actually an unconscious human psychic need. Who knows what he would say about Sedlák 's "CarnivaIs" ... JozefRidilla Kežmarok (18th December 1998)

Jozef Ridilla

Published by FOTOFO, Bratislava, 1999
Texts: Jozef Ridilla, Vladimír Vorobjov, 1989
Translation: Martin C. Styan, 1999
Layout: Barbara Neumannová, 1999
Scans: FO ART, Bratislava
Printing: LÚČ, Bratislava, 1999
84 pages
ISBN 80-85739-17-8

HOMO SAPIENS

Jozef Sedlák is one of the well known and recognized Slovak photographers, not only at home, but also abroad. No exhibition by a representative group of Slovak photographers is held without his participation. This is also shown by numerous catalogues and his independent monograph (Jozef Sedlák, Osveta, Martin, 1996) At college, he already began with a documentary series about conscripts starting military service (FAMU 1982, the exercise HOMO FABER) However but he did not abandon realistic photography like the majority of the young generation, during his later development, but continued with documentary work as a permanent part of his creative selfexpression. He created a large number of documentary series, which have something in common. In them, he recorded the life of people, who are rather shamefully described as peoplefrom the margins of society, whether they are older and less capable pensioners, or people affected in some way, physically or mentally handicapped, or addicted to drugs. As a review of his activities in the creative documentary area shows, this is systematic work, with a growing reputation and deepening importance.

In contrast to photographic reportage, the document (he is thinking especially of the social document) arises from deeper emersion in the depicted reality, so that the photographer must share at leastpart of the life of the photographed, and at best be one of them. jozef Sedlák fUlfilled this requirement literally and to the letter, when documenting a pilgrimage from Warsaw to Czestochowá, which he undertook together with a group of young people in wheelchairs and theirfriends, not only as a photographer, but as a full participant, with everything associated with this, including duties and regular care for common matters. Apart from this, he took photographs and created an exhibited series, which toured the Slovak towns of Bratislava, Humenné, Bardejov and Košice in 1995 under the name JOURNEYS The openings of these exhibitions were held in the presence, either of the people in wheelchairs and other pilgrims, or of kindred spirits, similarly "handicapped". Among the huge number of exhibition openings l have attended in more than 40 years of activity in photography and the exhibitions l actually open ed, these were associated with the deepest experiences. Jozef Sedlák is continuing to document everything connected with the community of people who are not divided according to "normality", but find ways to overcome barriers (for example in the society Samaritans). His latest works include the cycle "Dance'; in which he photographed this usually normal, but for people in wheelchairs remarkable event. He entered themfor the Slovak national round of the international FUJ! PRESS PHOTO competition, the exhibition of which was held in the framework of the 1998 Month of Photography. Jozef Sedlak: Karenval Most recently, Sedlák has introduced a new concept. It is not enoughfor him to produce documentary testimony about a particular community and some of its expressions or events in its life. He began to confront pictures of different groups of people in similar, but in some way completely different situations. He chose carnivals, including one of the worlďs most important (in Venice), which may have been photographed by all its participants for many years, usually with notoriously repetitive results. The disabled photograph an entirely d{fferent type of carnival, and Jozef Sedlák chose precisely this type: a carnival of the disabled. And immediately, without consciously seeking connections and similarities, pairs or artistic diptychs jumped out at him, with completely obvious hidden meanings. It was not a matter of external confrontation, or the union of two clearly similar moments.

They caught somethingfrom the essen ce of people expressing themselves with the help of masks and changing clothes, independently of their visihle or hidden c01poreality, playing atfirst sight happily, hut in reality unusually seriously, hecause the suhconscious or unconscious and the collective (Jung) or the wider supraconscious (Eastern philosophy) is expressed here, almost without restrainl. It is ./01' the viewer to disco ver in these magic or enchanted pa iTS of photographs what they all expTes~~ and tofind in them, the wealth of the wOrld amund and inside him. Without forcing, l offer what I read. Jozef Sedlak: Karenval Above all, I learnt that the essence ofa person, derivingfrom his SPirit, does not depend so much on his physical characteristics (nol'mal 01' handicapped), or only on his men tal ahilities (socalled mentally hea/tc hy 01' sick), hut on something deepel; at/zTst invisihle, which is expressed in special situations, sometimes in a remarkahle way, Or some times in an entirely simple way. And that physical Or mental disahility is not the worst thing that can happen to a person, that the most severely aj/licted are actually "norma!" people, who raise theil' nOrmality OVet' others, they raise themselves ahove those to whom destiny did not grant something Or took it away, hut who have, as a result, another important quality - the ahsence ofpride. The pmud person (HOMO AROGANS) is a ./001 and as Academic Charvát said "the fool is an affmnt to nature'; hecause natum tends towc;wds ever greater complexity and perfection and thefool negates this. Only HOMO SAPIENS, the understanding, wise and therefore also sensitive pel'son is usefull or humanity and natw'e in general. Jozef Sedlák also shows this wisdom in his documentary work and its most recent culmination. He does not divide people according to externalfeatures Or express only sentimental sympathy, hut takes the wOrld of people as a whole, where each person has his irreplaceahle position and value.

I see this as one of the most important messages of his carnival diptychs, which, as in real creation, are only a way of addressing what is BEHIND THEM. He achieved this, because his view of people, whether worldly and rich or "those others" is equally kind, perceptive and understanding. Jozef Sedlak: Karenval He does not hold up mirrors, he does not rebuke, he does not ridicule even where there is an opportunity (people proudly posing), but neither is there excessive compassion and sympathy for those to whom this is usually expressed. He sees the world in an original, spiritual way, without the deposits of the conventions created by insensitive and ignorant people. Therefore his attitude and the creative work derived from it, is entirely in the spirit of that, which is given to people really belonging to the species HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS

Vladimír Vorobjov

Jozef Sedlak: Karenval
Created by Tomáš Palkovič©