Peter Župník

The internationally renowned photographer PETER ŽUPNÍK joins the exhibition as an invited guest. A graduate of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, he is part of the New Wave movement in Slovak photography.  In 1995 he relocated to Paris, and his work can be found in some of the world’s most international collections: Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris; the Gernscheim Collections, Austin, TX; Maison Européene de la Photographie, Paris; Meda Mládková Collection, USA; MNAM, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Forbes Collection, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague; the Moravian Gallery, Brno; the Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava and many others. He currently lives and works in Levoča in Slovakia.

When entering the world of his photography, we feel that we have cut ourselves adrift from the noise and clamour of the surrounding world. Župník is a pilgrim who has the uncanny ability to see that which others would overlook. He looks upon the scene as an observer rather than a director – his role is to perceive. He guides us into a world filled with creatures which are invisible to the casual observer. These are scenes devoid of people, but we can sense the traces of humankind through Župník’s approach to the landscape. He perceives nature as a living entity, and he has admitted in many interviews that he feels more closely attached to nature than to the world of humans. He recalls shooting in Brittany: “I know of no other place where such unusual trees could be found. As I looked upon them, I suddenly started to see figures emerge from them, Bretons who had been standing there since the dawn of time and who had been transformed into these trees”. He was one of the first Slovak photographers to manipulate the colours of his images, shifting their scenes into alternative realities. As he explained to an interviewer, he began to ask himself “Where have those feelings which I once felt gone? Something was missing in these images. Why couldn’t static objects suddenly start to move? Why couldn’t that dog fly off to somewhere else?… In the 1980s I started to look for a way to achieve this… and I started to paint on my photographs”. These days, he achieves the same effect via Photoshop.

Župník fosters a symbiosis between the visible and the invisible, uncovering the minor miracles that require a degree of sensitivity – both on his part and our own. Even the slightest movement might cause his/their world to fall to pieces. These magic realist images of nature are something akin to visual essays, and the narratives they relate are apparent in their titles: SERIES I (Soul; Faceless; Madonna), SERIES II (The Man from Long Ago; Lost Being; Scream), SERIES III (Straight from Space; Memories; Mysterious Stranger).

Župník’s soulful associations are a reflection of wisdom and knowledge but also of the wide-eyed curiosity with which he looks upon the world. We can sense too a fragile vulnerability that he carries (together with his pebbles and chestnuts) within his soul, still child-like despite all of the experiences of his life. Nature is not a mere backdrop in his work; it is an active partner of equal validity, engaged in a silent dialogue between two living entities.  And it does so masterfully, in a manner that even the viewer can appreciate. This sense of equality is the foundation of existential symbiosis. Mankind and the landscape face each other here in silence, in form, in light, and through this encounter we can approach transcendence. Let there be light! “For me, the meaning of light is absolutely crucial. Without light, nothing exists. I believe that light is the source of everything. A subtle shift in light is all that is required to give the scene a completely different meaning. Even the simplest, most natural light that shines through a window, a passageway or a gap in a rock has the potential to create a view of the utmost impact in photography”.

In Peter Župník’s work, nature is not depicted as “something external to us” but as someone – a living being, intimate and close to our inner core. He brings nature out of the darkness and into the light, a process which is perhaps the fundamental principle of photography.

Edita Vološčuková, project curator