Vladimír Židlický: Retrospective 24. 2. 2015 – 26. 4. 2015

Vladimír Židlický (*1945 in Hodonín), studied at the Department of Photography of the Academy of Cinematic Arts in Prague from which he graduated in 1975. Since the 1960s, he has knowingly continued in the tradition of Czech imaginative art. He embarked on his career as an abstract painter, and subsequently, as a photographer, he has remained faithful to building his figural visions on a foundation embedded in the classic art disciplines. His experimentation involving drawing with light in the field of view, tampering with the negative emulsion, and toning, results in a disengagement of the photos on view here from the descriptiveness that is otherwise a standard attribute of the genre of nude photography.

The focus of the present exhibition at the same time harks back to historical photographic techniques. Notwithstanding his avowed penchant for creative innovation, Židlický harbours an equally determined affinity for the permeation of structures and suggestive power embodied by photography as a naturalistic medium. With this solo show drawing a balance-sheet of his photographic output, Prague is hosting once again, after a hiatus of two and a half decades, a highly individual figure of the European art scene.