Jakub Dolejs, Escape to West Germany, 1972 (2002). Image: jakubdolejs.com

VoCA first came across Dolejs’s work at the National Gallery of Canada in 2006, where his pieces Escape to West Germany, 1972 and Caspar David Friedrich Sketching My Homeland, 1810 were included in the excellent exhibition Acting the Part: Photography as Theatre.

Incidentally, the catalogue from this show is well worth buying. You can find it HERE.

The works were particularly appropriate to the exhibition because they were essentially images of stage sets – a painted backdrop in front of which a character posed – together uniting the image in a reference to the history of painting. Caspar David Friedrich Sketching my Homeland may be seen as a direct reference to Friedrich’s 1818 painting The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.

Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818. Image: wikimedia.org

Jakub Dolejs, Caspar David Friedrich Sketching my Homeland, 1810, (2003). Image: jakubdolejs.com

Looking at these photographs, you feel as if you’re necessary to these works, the way an audience is necessary to the theatre. The artist provided the background and middle ground, and you, the viewer, are supposed to provide the foreground, completing the piece.

Great stuff.

At Dolejs’ new exhibition (at Angell Gallery, Toronto, September 14 to October 13) we found the installation piece La Nuit Americaine, (a tongue-in-cheek reconstruction of a corner of a Louvre gallery, complete with re-painted masterpieces) in the front gallery to be a little kitch, but never mind, the three photographs hanging at the back of Angell Gallery have a similarly intriguing effect to those at the National Gallery. The images, satisfyingly symmetrical mini stage sets, appear to have been shot in the prop department backstage at a theatre, but are in fact carefully constructed sets in the artist’s studio.

Jakub Dolejs, Breach, 2006. Image: jakubdolejs.com

Jakub Dolejs, Enlightened Parts, 2006. Image: jakubdolejs.com

Jakub Dolejs, Spectacle, 2006. Image: jakubdolejs.com

Dolesj says that when he was in Paris last year (doing the Canada Council residency) he visited a lot of 18th century mansions and admired the seductive crumbling of the interiors. His work is about the signifiers that shape this kind of opulent decay.

Of course the idea of decay is one that can refer to the cycle of nature and the human life cycle: growth and decay. That is precisely what makes these works so strong, that like all good art, we can see ourselves in it.

Breach suggests anticipation, as if the actors have yet to appear on stage. Enlightened Parts, looks as if - as a collector at the opening observed - it is “waiting for my mother”. And in Spectacle, the action has occurred, and the audience – that’s you – is applauding.