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.
