the exhibition is located in Wyspianski 2000 Pavilion at Photomonth in Krakow 2009

Martin Dostal "Concept as photography by Jiří David", 2009

Conceptual thinking in visual arts does not necessarily mean unemotional, strictly intellectual work.        Jiří David is an essential representative of concept which iconographically demanding yet communicatively clear, direct, and emotional. The Czech as well as international scene knows him since the middle of the nineties mainly as a photographer. At that time his most often exhibited series were his conceptual cycles Hidden Image (1991-1995) and No Compassion (2002). Nevertheless since the middle of the eighties, David is also a renowned “postmodern” painter, creates installations, objects, and also works with neons. His contribution to European painting is based on combining chromatic or monochromatic surfaces with fragmentary drawings, sings, symbols, in their mutual layering and intersecting, when the inner plot of each canvas fills the surface to its borders to leave the viewer with a certain trace of incompleteness,      of transgressing the emotion beyond the area of the painting, beyond art, into factual existence. It is interesting to follow this intention in David's photographic work as well. This demands a certain dose of lyricism, melancholy, sadness, and romanticism - i.e. something which from time to time yet constantly the Czech art scene and its approaches are being accused of. But in the Czech Republic the personal experience represents a certain and specific advantage. Personal iconography of the work helps to get over the oppressive feeling an artist can experience, while getting lost in the reality o uselessness.
David's exhibition projects incorporate ambition to stage visual outputs in the form of compact attacks,     be it a one specific cycle or a combination of various works. This pertains to both the areas of David's photographic work as well as to his other artifacts from the wide scope of visual  media employed by him. The Krakow presentation is a conceptual mix of which photography is nevertheless the main carrying element. David is represented by three of his strongest conceptual photographic cycles. These include the already mentioned Hidden Image, right-right and left-left composited double portraits of personalities from the areas of arts, sports, sciences as well as politics. These portraits were welcomed by one of the sitters, specifically  French philosopher Jacques Derrida, as the opportunity to uncover “the other me myself, twice me, me which gets to know itself, without knowing itself.1.” Also the already mentioned photographic cycle No Compassion, which shows a series of “crying” personalities from the world of politics ranging from the negative to the most positive ones, uncovers relativity of the official faces of the (omni) potent few leading apparitions from the beginning of the new millennium. David created these from ready made official pictures, accessible from press agencies and added a simple personal emotional sign, tears themselves, without any discrimination to all the selected political figures. The cycle My Hostage is presented as well. These staged photographs date from 1998. They show bound children with masked faces in color environments. The themes are violence and its conception in an emotionally defenseless age of boy's childhood. Here David predicted moments that in the upcoming years cut through the media both in the private as well as “war” cases of violence.
Besides these cycles, staged by the artist himself, Jiří David intensively photographs several “endless” series since the middle of the nineties. Photography is an intimate process for David, be it  the photographs of Things and Spaces, People in Landscape, Animals in Landscape. He also works with family “models”, like his wife, daughter, but mainly his photogenic and fictile son Daniel. These pictures enable David to create narrative visual games with many implied significations in between the lines, with fragments of events and situations, impact of which is multiplied by their presence within the cycle or the crossings of the cycles themselves. What we can consider to be a great contribution is the fine balance between a photographic concept and unique “documentary” film narration as well as the painter's experience.