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Mendes Wooden DM is proud to current The Labours of Hercules, Vojtěch Kovařík‘s first solo exhibition within the gallery’s Brussels house. Following his earlier reveals with the gallery in New York, São Paulo and Villa Period, Italy, Kovařík will likely be taking up the whole lot of the gallery’s two flooring to delve into his ardour for Greek mythology and inform the story of the Twelve Labours of Hercules.
Because the story goes, Hercules was born from an affair that Zeus, father of the gods, had with a mortal lady named Alcmene. Zeus’ spouse, the goddess Hera, nursed the kid unaware that he was her husband’s illegitimate son, and her divine milk gave Hercules his supernatural energy. From the second Hera realised who the kid was, she repeatedly tried to kill him, however when all her makes an attempt proved unsuccessful, she induced a insanity in him that brought on him to kill his spouse and youngsters. To atone for this, Hercules consulted the Oracle of Delphi and the god Apollo, and was lastly instructed to spend ten years serving Eurystheus, the king of Mycenae on the time. Throughout this time of servitude, Hercules was despatched to carry out twelve troublesome duties, or labours, which have since been immortalised all through the course of artwork historical past, from classical artwork, sculpture and mosaics all the way in which to Tintoretto and Rubens.
By way of a mixture of immersive giant and small-scale work, Kovařík isolates moments from the parable that resonate together with his sensibilities and places them to canvas. Quite than making a chronologically framed cycle of works that charts all the story from begin to end, the artist hones in on crucial or iconic moments inside the narrative, but in addition affords extra intimate and psychologically charged seems on the states of thoughts of a number of the characters within the story.
Utilizing his signature mixture of acrylic, oil and sand on canvas, Kovařík breathes new life into this historic and cautionary story of heroism and redemption, with the sculptural our bodies of his heroes, all the time constrained by his canvases, frozen in time however alive with a color palette that stands in stark distinction to the sober, white sculptures of Hercules that line the sculpture halls of antiquities museums all over the world.
Vojtěch Kovařík (b. 1993, Valašské Meziříčí, Czech Republic) lives and works in Brno, Czech Republic.
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