…and when you enter into the fifth and sixth dimensions, no matter where in space you inhabit, you’d witness every possible permutation of what can occur past, present, and future…eventually entering the tenth dimension, we reach the point where everything becomes possible and imaginable. At least that’s what the radically simplified version of string theory is telling us.
You can possibly go through a similar experience after an hallucinogenic poisoning using a grated nutmeg, an otherwise quite common spice. Even though its narcotic effects are not generally known, many countries are nevertheless applying strict regulations on the amount of this dried out seed that is available for sale.
At the point when the boundaries of reality start to blur and time loses its defined character, there is a chance that you’ll suddenly appear on the Banda Islands, also called the Spice Islands, located in Indonesia. The times are…medieval, where Arab traders from the port of Basra are sailing the oceans and controlling a vivid market of precious spices. Only they hold the secret of the origin of the nutmeg. One of them was also the legendary Sinbad who’s story was told by Scheherazade during the One Thousand and One Nights of storytelling. The precious nutmeg was being delivered to Europe where the wealthy merchants of Venice paid for it in its weight in gold.
The location of the islands was discovered by the Portuguese explorers, who tried for nearly a century to secure the trade route for themselves. Only to be overcome by the Dutch. In 1621 the Dutch East India Company in an attempt to dominate the spice trade waged a bloody battle over the Banda island, reducing its population during the process from fifteen thousand to one. Myristica fragrans, a true nutmeg tree, was then transplanted all over the colonial dominions, to become later on the common and easily available spice as we know it today.
The romantic vision of sailing into distant unexplored exotic lands is slowly dissolving into the strict reality entangled between axes X, Y, Z and the passing time. Only to be replaced by the banal poetry of massive volumes of boiling asphalt of international highways systems with unending jams of trucks flattened by the orthographic projection.
Antonín Jirát (*1984) comes in his practice from the medium of photography and its gradual change with the rapid development of current technology. The original materiality and character of an artifact, which has lately been consumed by endless streams of Instagram Stories is at the core of Jirát’s interest. He works with a discovered digital material, for which he composes new fictitious stories or imaginary situations, the same as with his own, often staged photographic compositions and scenarios. Jirát is attentive towards the evidential value of a static image in comparison to its continuation and prolongation in a video or a film, which he’s on rare occasions utilizing too. Challenging the boundaries between different media is present even in Jirát’s long-term tendency to connect an object and its photographic representation, or reference. In other words, to transfer an object into a plane and vice versa. A good example of this approach is the current series of photographs of trucks captured with the help of a technique of so-called orthographic projection, which practically negates perspective since the objects are not changing their dimensions with a growing distance.
Jirát graduated from the University of Jana Evangelisty Purkyně in Ustí nad Labem, CZ in the studios of Štěpánka Šimlová and Pavel Kopříva. Together with Jiří Thýn, they lead a studio of post-conceptual photography at FAMU (Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague). His work was shown on numerous group exhibitions, for example at the House of Arts, Brno, Gallery AMU; Centre for Contemporary Art Futura, Karlín Studios or 4+4 festival, all in Prague; D21 in Leipzig, Germany; Cultural Foundation of Tinos and Haus N Athen in Greece or on the 9th international biennial of photography in Liegé, Belgium. Solo exhibitions of Antonín Jirát were presented at Fotograf Gallery, Gallery Kostka, City Surfer Office, ProLuka Gallery, all in Prague; HotDock p.s. in Bratislava, or in Czech Centres in Stockholm and in Sofie among others.
Jen Kratochvil
Imprint
| Artist | Antonín Jirát |
| Exhibition | History of Dimensions |
| Place / venue | Stone Projects, Prague |
| Dates | September 14 – October 12, 2018 |
| Curated by | Jen Kratochvil |
| Website | stoneprojects.cz |
| Index | Antonín Jirát Stone Projects |