Jaromir Rybàk

Cloud of Rain
Melted and fusion glass


Biography

Born in Pilzen Czechoslovakia in 1952

From 1967 to 1971 : Special school in glass, Zelezny Brod (CZ)

From 1973 to 1979 : Academy of Decorative arts, Prague  (Professor Libensky)

"I search for a truth which must not be revealed – therefore I  disclose  my intimate certainties  the help of which made me happy  …I hope that my friends feel concerned"

Jaromir Rybak’s world

For two decades, we have keenly followed the work of Jaromir Rybak , and everytime we experience the same feeling of waiting.

This feature has nothing to do with that calculated and so contemporary art, which has become conventional and consists in puzzling the public, through the easiness of the chock or scandal or also the aesthetic of the forms. The originality and specificity of this could be reduced, of course, to a simple and outstanding emotive experience. But they can become the innovatory key to the essence of confrontation.


Initiation to intimate relations between the personal research of the artist and his sculptural expression. But how to give a name to that specifity without revealing it, without depriving it from its mystery, how can  its leading feature be discovered ?..................

During that short six-year period, after he had finished his studies in 1979 at the Superior School of Decorative Arts (Ecole Superieure des Arts Décoratifs) under the supervision of Professeur Libensky, Jaromir Rybak enjoyed a rich experience. Just like the other artists he got influenced by his epoch, but, as a creative artist, he was not playing the role of an extra, but that of a leading actor.

Perhaps that specificity was nothing less than an invitation to discover the close links existing within the theme that the artist developed continuously, an invitation to disclose the deep meaning which remains hidden when you look at a work and when  you can not make out a way through the Jumble of the actual “carnival” of art.

Besides, the artist gets description more difficult to handle despite of himself.

We should also consider how misleading some glass work titles sound, in the 1970s and 1980s. These titles might be confusing in the way we interpret them. Actually the titles were more often assigned  in a hurry, without any sensible link with the inspiration or creation context.

We know that a new creative period can focus on a feature that we did not notice previously. I remember one of my first meetings with Jaromir Rybak. This artist who was overjoyed as he was continuously experimenting new techniques applied to glass carving, seemed to hide something which differed from clarity and visible glamour of his works, that is something which I consider as a feeling of sadness.

This stress and first contradiction between formal appearance expressing the typical style of Libensky school in the 1970s and the contents, spaces and inner ideas, focusing on some thing archierc, aggressive and complexe resulting in the conclusion that the external aspect did not finally imply ay essential consideration, as everything led to the essence of scultpture. That is what pushed me to go further in Rybak’s study. In the first period in the 1980, Rybak dealt with basic forms, just lide Libensky’s school teaching but with the benefit of hindsight, we really notice that most of the geometric forms correspond to a smaller portion, as if the madelling plastic should not be considered as an ultimate purpose.

  What should be kept as essential is in the inner spaces, the complex (intricate) interactivity of glassware, leading lines and sides newly melted in this maze of uncertainties and expectations in the tricky maze of the human mind. To better grasp Rybak’s works which became classical references, the smallest objects, even then minor ones are expressive. Sometimes, born from out of a state of mind at a given time, referring to unreal animals monsters, or mythic ghosts who develop with sarcastic fear and danger all these objects are not so to speak sculptures.
They are more considered as eye witnesses of history and traditions, but they hide both the discord  and the inner stress.

The purpose of these objects is more important than their physical appearance. Further more in the biocosm of the author.

It’s true, turns the glass visible but inaccessible.

Such is the wisdom of an artist, to protect this work from any dependence and variability of modes, or banality of the superficial glistening.

Starting from the 1980s, we can mention two projects which sublimated the bounds of sculptures in glass and are in relation with space. The “Runway” project which, at once, and without, hiding anything and with the same means of expression reveals in a monumental plan the human effort to overcome one’s own limits, but it is conscientiously illusive as well.

The second project “The Master” is a plastic master piece of two meters fifty high, expressing the mysterious myth of Golem for which Rybak endeavoured all his techniques in glass blowing which he mastered in that epoch. Moreover, Rybak found there an expression which could be revealed in its actual project.

“The Master” set a part from its axis and motionless as well with its unavoidable state of mind, nearly brutal, mythological, heralds the second part of the 1980s.

“The walking Animal ”, “the Totem”, “Sacrificial ground” and many other works not only do they express the archetype world of human king but they reveal the rebellion against the “easy” effects of the glass as a material against the endless abuse of its purity and its perfection? Such is frequently the case only as a metaphor of Rybak uses these intuitive values without any pre-conceived plan. His present work is an evidence  , a reference to primitive cultures to the pillars of the European context  and to other non-European civilisations.
Their    common point has the elementary  feature ,strength and fairness of the non verbal symbolic  experience .Alllthesz signs which are well known and ar e referred to in the ancient tradition where christianity  is dealt with a direct objectivism , as if they were only going to be  named and get  involved in an epic dimension .

Rybak  doesnot consider their traditional  interpretation , their image or the mediation of their image .He seems  that in the bottom of his soul rybak  hopes  that his creation  will be accepted  as it is in its function  and dimension  of its cult and for those who are going to apprehend him Thus it will become  an object , or even  a place of preservation  against devil ‘s powers , the powers , the transmission  of evil  , devils ,omniscient ghost , a projector  against  unknown forces  or wild animals, this sort  of vtalisman which has practically been rejected totally from our life ,in our modern times  where scientific  values got so much importancce , this talisman  in which we still believe secretly and which finally helps us  to survive .

Even the glass as a  material accepts this cult- based role , the way it is processed sways constanty  between its processing and its natural form between the material in fusion , all of a sudden assassinated through a cold processing  and the practical tradition  of its transformation  from glass to anti-glass .This leads  us to simple formal expression of primitive cultures  and of course to Czchec symbolism by the end  of the previous century

The mythological analogies  are only produced by the experience  of these mazes, they result from the knowledge of this single and return trip  somekind of lost and found security paradox implied by words and conventions  .

Refusing to disclose  the slightest reflect  of reality  and the willingness  of experience  and feeling seem to set free  this intellectual approach  stuck to symbolsand to archeology  of human  thought  .

Rybak fully agrees  with the trends that are the source  of the intellectual  movement which doesnot concern art only  through this form  of expression  , he also tries  in this entity a new type of communication   in his work regarding a silent harmony and towards  a comprehension  which  was supposed to be pre-existing  before the verbal communication , at the time  when the comprehension  of the concept of creation  was nothing but  the acceptance  of its magical , protective or cult –based function .This means that we are not situated as it would seem  in the traditional optic  , in terms  of romantic subjectivity not too hermetic.
On the contrary , we should  be able to  to overcome  the comfortable bounds of the self.

Opposing to  that impersonal  reality, so called objective  there  discerns and indivisible
world, a completeness  involving our own inner  life and the universality which  implies  a cosmologic significance owing to our position  within the whole universe.

This could be just  a hope that something is on ; but the energy  produced  within the objects , most recently  created , like trees , planets  which appear  with force from somewhere , from the deepest depth .; getting a good start  does not only   imply an  inexhaustible strength  but an elusive magic as well .

Rybak ‘s works are not here  to be contemplated , be evaluated  or simply  see that they exist. They  are there to make us share a world  of powers  and secrets  , a world  to the creation of which  we are all contributing , like the artist , in these  instants  , he is by his own in front  of his inachieved  Arch of Noah .To  what deep genesis does it infer ?

Kristian Suda

Awards

1985 - 3 rd Honour Prize, Zweiter Coburger  Glaspreis Cobourg (D)
1991 - Jugend Gestaltet, Munich  (D)
2 nd prize Biot - 1st Bienal of contemporary  glass (1ere biennale du verre contemporain) (F)
Gold Medal – Prague Glass Prize – Prague (CS)

Official collections

Moravian gallery, Brno (CS)

The museum of glass , art and techniques, Charleroi (B)

Kunstsamlungen der Veste Coburg,Cobourg (D)

The Corning Museum of Glass Corning, New York (USA)

Museum of decorative arts, Lausanne (CH)

Museum of decorative arts, Paris (F)

Museum of decorative arts, Prague (CS)

Czechoslovak Ministry of Culture, Prague (CS)

Exhibitions

Since 1980, Jaromir Rybak has been arranging individual or collective exhibitions in Europe, Japan, USA  and Canada.

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