/would you use a weapon against a person?/
Ondřej Přibyl (born 1978, and since 1999 a student at the photography studio at the School of Architecture and Applied Arts in Prague) prefers to choose those themes that portray the problems of our civilization in a broader social context. Přibyl's works are firmly rooted in photography. His rational conception is based on a precision and an objectivity of seeing. In contrast to his older, often staged series in which he worked with the human factor and was concerned mainly with problems of communication, in recent years the artist's interest has shifted towards documenting certain phenomena, of either society or landscape. In these works photography is not a means of manipulating the segment of reality that it frames. Přibyl does not conceal reality, but rather in his sober rendition he ”makes precise“ a reality that in itself is absurd.A common feature of Přibyl's photographs of the last two years is an unpretentious style. If his Waterworks (Vodárny, 2003) portrays the fecklessness and uniformity of concrete buildings planted in a land- scape, then the portraits of Weapon Owners (Majitelé zbraní, 2003) are a thorough inquiry into a disquieting social phenomenon. Přibyl chose this ”focus group“ because he is interested in it, not to enagge in a priori criticism. Using the method of opinion polls and systematic documen- tation, he tracks the relationship of concrete people to a deadly weapon. The series might well be called ”Would you use a weapon against a person?“ Even though the responses of a group of people in their thirties who hold firearm licences oscillate between the region of 'maybe' and 'never', while admitting also the 'trickiness' of owning a gun, even so they make one nervous. For the gun owners do not address the question of the urge to own such a weapon. The moment of using it against another person, in contrast, they are able to imagine with re- markable vividness and determination: ”I really trust myself to recognize the moment to use the weapon. The first shot would be in the air, and if that didn't help, well, I'd shoot him through the leg, I don't have a problem with that,“ says the owner of a Luger.
/would you use a weapon against a person?/ ””American Shot (Medium Shot)“ lends the series the right 'color', by transporting its pistoleros with cool irony onto the level of the classical Western, thus bringing to mind possible sources of inspiration for this militant trend. At the same time, the terseness of the statements of these "old hands", and the dispassionate style of the color shots bring out their ordinary qualities, lending the series special impact. If we did not get a detailed manual of how to read the photographs, including a circled spot indicating where they usually carry their guns (or where they claim to almost never carry them), we would certainly not judge these people to be of this type if we casually saw them in the street. In its thorough method, the series has the air of a police prodecural, as if hinting how very imprecise can be the border between a game and an aggressive deviation from norm, between sport and firing live ammunition.
This exactness of method is pursued also in a more recent black and white series, Extract from the Catalogue of Antonín Přibyl. In a catalogue documenting the self-built estate of his grandfather, the artist's thorough approach takes on a new quality, where irony overlaps with a purely personal involvement. Ondřej is not only coming to terms with the strangely impassioned and didactic do-it-yourselfship of his own ancestor, but with the phenomenon of the weekend handyman, and such cottage activities in general. Here the basic tenets for illustrating the photograp- hed person are taken to the extreme - a few attributes stand in for Antonín Přibyl altogther. In his recent series on people watching television, Přibyl works almost in reverse. With some exaggeration, we can say that the faces of the anonymous viewers here are inexpressive attributes of the very shows they are watching. This psychologically novelizing and yet ”natural“ situation in front of the TV screen places the portrayed viewers on a totally passive, anonymous level, and only the titles of the programs they watch suggest the possible implications of the situation.
The artist's disciplined and straightforward creative method has its flip side: Ondřej Přibyl is a team player, an activist in the collaborative group kunstWerk! His investigative approach can be better understood precisely in the context of the malingering activities of kW. Their standpoints are not those of straightforward engagement, but arise from the ordinary urge to take refuge in illusory weekend-cottage style, where one feels he or she can influence at least some small specific thing. A sense of civic dissatisfaction with the general levelling of global values is ventured by kW - for instance, in their field programs organized (mostly outdoors) in the vicinity of the family weekend cottage where A. Přibyl lived and worked. Parodoxically, we become more free the more we realize we are manipulated, so if kW are correct in believing that whoever is somebody today owns a tennis racket, then for instance their play at racket-testing is not merely a witty rehabilitation of the stereotype of weekend leisure activities and subsequently documented performances, but above all an ironic paraphrase of the state of things today.
Přibyl's position as an artist can be understood on two basic levels: the perspective, corresponding with the chosen theme, and its adequate method - the right ratio of dispassionate inquiry and the eloquence of qualitative attributes, Přibyl stands on firm ground, and sees his testimonies through to the very end.