Trans Mother, 1994, 700 x 250 x 50 cm, mixed media.
This temporary installation was inspired by the devastation of nature in the North Bohemian region. During the communist era, the artist used to live in Ústí nad Labem, which was often shrouded in exhalations. In this case, their influence manifested itself in a kind of psychedelic vision of the landscape (Mother Nature), which took on the form of a chemical laboratory or an alchemist’s garden.
The landscape features abstract sculptures made of glass and porcelain reminiscent of chemical laboratory flasks or electrical aggregates and insulators. In this scaled-down environment, they resemble utopian sci-fi architecture, but also the steaming towers of North Bohemian power plants.
The surface of the landscape is covered with a white sparkly dust reminiscent of snow or synthetic powder referring to psychotropic substances. Occasionally, a white plastic plant grows from the body of the Mother, giving a frozen and rigid impression. There is also a kind of bridge or an iron canal, reminiscent of a gas or oil pipeline, hovering over the region. It is filled with a bluish liquid that continuously spews foam, while clumps of the chemical fall onto Mother’s body where they disappear. There are also railroad tracks crossing the landscape, setting off by contrast like metallic black veins in which the blood has long since congealed, but a train still passes over them, which on closer inspection looks more like an abstract velvet cell. You can even see road signs along the tracks. These are the work of Pavel Kopřiva who intervened in the landscape with Letterist symbols that look like archaic writing from occult texts.
Trans Mother, 1994, 700 x 250 x 50 cm, mixed media.
