ZDENĚK TOMÁNEK - NURSERY PLANTS
Zdeněk Tománek (1958) is an established artist on the contemporary art scene. He started his career as a student of the Secondary School of Applied Art (SSAA) in Uherské Hradiště ( Jan Habarta). At the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (Miloš Axman, Stanislav Hanzlík), the author found his way to his main sculptural material, bronze. After graduating from the Academy, he worked there as a lecturer before returning to his native town of Uherské Hradiště, where he became a teacher and head of the stone sculpture studio at the SSAA. He became a member of the Union of Visual Artists of the Czech Republic, the Association of Czech Medalists, the Q Association and the VM Group.
Tománek’s work encompasses a wide range of creative activities from small sculptures, bas-reliefs, medals, monumental architectural sculptures (Uherské Hradiště, Prostějov, Hodonín, Kralupy nad Vltavou, Prague etc.) to drawings and paintings. He regularly participates in international symposia, meeting points for artists expressing different opinions and using a variety of materials for their art. There are two major directions in his artistic expression – sculpture and drawing. Each sculptor works with drawings as the first records capturing the basic idea before a three-dimensional model or sculpture is created. Tománek‘s drawings are not just sketches, they are the result of concentrated work, they have become a distinct works of art capturing the life around us. He works with various means of expression that are available in sculpture, such as the shape of the mass, spatial expression, selection of material. In some of the works, the wrinkled or otherwise distorted surface of bronze contrasts with the perfectly smooth surface of marble. All this leads to the merging of the individual plastic elements into a coherent sculpture. Tománek expresses his thoughts and impulses in a sensitive way by using traditional sculptural materials such as plaster, stone, bronze, or plastic materials like laminate. Since 2017, he has been working with aluminium. Despite its high demands on the casting and welding technologies and the need to search for new ways of patinating, aluminium offers a wide range of options that can be used in sculpting.
The aim of the Nursery Plants exhibition was to present the creation of sculptures, created mostly in recent years. Many of them are exhibited for the first time at the Václav Chad Gallery - such as Dangerous Triangle (2018, aluminium), inspired by the underwater world, or Staircase (2017, bronze) symbolizing the path of fate. A feeling of unrest and uncertainty of existence can be felt in the room featuring Fruits of the Present (2017, bronze), Tower of Heretics (2015, bronze), or the lightweight Angel Wire (2017, aluminium). On the contrary, in the next section, we observe inspirational elements from nature, such as a garden and small animals and plants living in it, which surround the artist‘s studio and transform themselves into a mysterious scenery composed of various elements.
Miroslava Kupčíková
