Publication details
Daniel Balabán – Tanec života
| Title in English | Daniel Balaban – Dance of Life |
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| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Exposition |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The painter Daniel Balabán (* 1957) is one of the classics of contemporary Czech figurative painting. He has been in the domestic artistic scene since the mid-1980s. He comes from Šumperk, since 1962 he lives in Ostrava. Since 1993 he has been the head of the Department of Painting at the University of Ostrava, where he has been educating young artistic generation for more than two decades. The artwork of Daniel Balaban benefits and follows the tradition of post-war Czech figuration. At the same time, it not only surpasses and develops its valuable sovereign gesture, but also historical and intellectual connotations and overlaps. In three decades of its development, it has become one of the most significant moments of contemporary Czech painting. The painter's gesture builds on a significantly subjective vision and experience of the world, family history, memories, journeys records, and events taking place in public shared space. Daniel Balaban is a painter, but at the same time inherently a teacher, he is intensively considering his work in broad philosophical and psychological contexts. It also considers the polarity of Men and Women, their different worlds and the possibilities of their interaction. Balaban's painting is clearly subjective, so it could bring a generally valid message. Symptomatic images, visual fragments of our private lives, and culturally shared content and formulas. A number of works oscillate in a distinctive manner at the border of an easily decipherable intimate document, intellectual commentary, or media grotesque with elements of black humor. Often these layers intertwine, deny, and eventually reinforce each other to inadvertently reflect on the ambiguity of the interpretations of today's world. The exhibition is linked to last year's retrospective in House of Arts in Ostrava, but it is based on the current creative position, the expression of the last ten years. For the first time, the Pardubice audience presents cycles devoted to the symbolic figure of the Inner Women, a momentary interactions of the male and female universes. But also pictures and inspiration from the journeys, showing the often well-known tourist sites inseparably connected with the perception of local cultural identity, but given a new, completely individual painting way. |