Pavel Herynek: Circularities, circular drawings 1997 – 2010

Seeing Pavel Herynek’s drawings for the first time was for me a truly pleasurable revelation. I’m convinced that in these drawings Herynek addresses original and authentic issues which deal directly with the phenomenon of the creation of an art work. He also articulates in a new way the relationship between the artist as subject and the organizational order.

Pavel Herynek calls these pieces of work circular drawings or rotocalligraphies, and the two groups have in common the way they have been created: as records of drawing on a rotating surface. This determines what is for the artwork fundamental: the relationship between the artist as self and the mechanical process. By letting the paper rotate, the artist deliberately creates “an obstacle” which determines the outcome and gives the work a concentric form. A range of variants exists between the absolute, pure, impersonal record, i.e. a precise circle, and the modifications created by the artist’s intervention. Herynek himself uses a basic criterion in order to distinguish between the two groups: circular drawings are calmer and accentuate regularity with minor divergences. Rotocalligraphy takes advantage of the more dynamic way of rotation and consequently a greater divergence of shape from the absolute shape of a circle can be achieved.

Both types of work are statements about the mutuality of a geometrical structure and its individual articulation, and on a more general level, they are expressions of a correlation between the human effort and the determinants, which may become constitutive factors. In choosing a rotating movement the artist is in control of two aspects of the artificial world. By examining the extent and the nature of order, he also opens up another area for examination that of the link between the order of an art work and order as such, the order of the universe.

Jiří Valoch