Vaseline Pools 1991, vaseline, water, variable dimensions.
Just after the revolution in 1990, I worked in the North Bohemian brown coal mine in Chabařovice. I perceived the area of the shaft, where Lake Milada is today, as hell on earth. There were giant machines digging real giant stairs to the imaginary Dante’s Inferno. At the bottom of the abyss there was a black coal pit spewing smoke and occasionally also flickering flames of fire, fed by natural gas. The soil was eroding all around and exhaust fumes floated above it.
My job was to grease that infernal machine – RK bucket chain excavator – with red Vaseline. I was perpetually greased from head to toe with it, so after a while I started to see it as part of my body. The gooey stuff actually looked like some kind of biological substance. A handful of Vaseline was reminiscent of flesh. So I began to use this attractive substance creatively.
Baseline Pools 1991, vaseline, water, variable dimensions.
Upon leaving the mine, I received a barrel of Vaseline as a gift from my co-workers and started working with it in the gallery. One of the first things I made was a Vaseline pool. I was driven by the idea to create something simple yet mysterious, something that would evoke uncertainty as well as fascination in the viewers. The pool was soft, slick and repulsive. It contained lithium grease based on mineral oil that repels water. When I poured the Vaseline into the pool, a strange plaque formed on its surface, resembling soggy and decomposing flesh.
At the time I created the first pool, the American series Twin Peaks by Mark Frost and David Lynch was being shown in our country. At the opening, one of my friends informed me that in one of the episodes there is a similar ghostly pool in front of the entrance to the Black Lodge, which has the form of a red room full of endless darkness leading to hell, as one could say. So the wheels of fate fit together perfectly.
Vaseline Pools 1991, vaseline, water, variable dimensions.
Baseline Pools 1991, vaseline, water, variable dimensions, detsail
Pool from the movie “Twin Peaks”.