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The Condition of Possibility

Kant’s idealism was a powerful attractor for the philosophically inclined artist. “The Four Moments of Aesthetic Judgement” especially interested him. The installation included a precisely machined, steel container filled with motor oil, in which four cast metal blocks of type spell out the name Kant. Nearby, on a pedestal theatrically draped with red velvet, perched a small sculpture of an angel. Key shaped, sculptural forms hung on the walls, archetypes that might unlock ancient riddles. The sleek drum full of motor oil, with its tranquil surface, reflected the countenance of all who gazed upon it. The metal blocks spelling out Kant’s name became a monument to reflection, that is to say, to thought. Metal hooks held laminated copies of graphics depicting celestial beings, seraphim, free for the taking. There were also “blank” laminated copies — as if to put these heavenly beings in brackets of doubt. In an adjacent chamber, there was a pedestal covered in a red velvet theater curtain displaying a paper boat on a brick of marble, a material rich in associations with the history of sculpture.  

Next to the walls were four marble triangles, ideal Platonic objects engraved  with these variations on a theme:  

“The essence of what is seen is found in the unseen; the essence of listening resides in the unheard; the essence of speech is unsayable; the essence of the expressible resides in the inexpressible.”

 

It was in this work that Polívka began the occultation of his “secret forms” which he developed in the years to follow. Wooden cutouts were covered in white canvas, and painted with a mixture of white chalk and oil from a recipe in Trattato della Pittura by Cennino Cennini. Was this a gesture to appease the connoisseurs of painting, or was it more simply a ritual to invoke painting’s august history without being crushed by it?

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