CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/3/2014

The Slovak New Wave

Kamil Varga's "Ostrich" (1985) is reproduced from The Slovak New Wave, Kant's new collection of experimental 80s Czech photography. Lucia L. Fišerova writes, "In an effort to define oneself existentially in relation to the oppressive space, the theme of fences, chain link or other kinds, played a special formal and semantic role of a barrier that can, and indeed must, be surmounted, or sometimes, when there is no other choice, just remains to be looked through… Unlike the oppressiveness of four walls, into which the figures are firmly wedged, the landscape exterior provides new opportunities to exit or fly away. But even 'outside' there seemed to be no feeling of complete freedom. Bodies running into blind alleys, growing into the land head first, or with arms raised sideways in a fertile field and humbly identifying with the line of the horizon."