Vít Soukup & Markéta Soukupová: Wedding Anniversary

On our wedding anniversary,
Motto: "If you want to know a dog - you must have a bitch!" (J.John), ,

Wedding is a ritual that counts among the main moments of existence. Like all rituals, it serves to unite the will, direct action, harmonize souls, and achieve a general balance, both of physical and social forces. It is a ceremony that symbolically expresses the union of the body and soul of two people. However, this ceremony also establishes the status of marriage in their harmony. Francis Bacon said of marriage that it serves as a safeguard against sensuality, while natural sensuality is the impetus, so to speak, for marriage. The one should not exclude the other, but the status of marriage is not in itself sensual.,
Then there is eroticism, a valuable lesson in the thermodynamics of sexual expression and repression. It awakens sexual arousal in our minds because our brains are pre-programmed as a trigger mechanism for sex hormones. This hardware is activated in our minds by a variety of stimuli that the brain has learned to associate with sexual challenges and opportunities.
So sex happens primarily in our minds, and pornography is really anything that turns us on. Even the dictionary defines pornography as written, pictorial, or any other form of communication intended to arouse sexual desire. By this definition, pornography does not preclude marriage at all, just as sexual desire, the undeniable source of life and procreation, does not preclude being a sacred and spiritual matter. But it should not be associated with violent impulses, only then does it become an obscene matter.

Vit Soukup's new series of paintings is dedicated to the anniversary of his marriage to Markéta, celebrated not only with this exhibition but also with the birth of his son Václav. The erotic testimony of the 9 paintings in the cycle is based on 9 engravings made by Markéta based on Vít's drawings from porn magazines, followed by an ultrasound diary of the development and movement of the embryo. Eroticism is here linked to physicality and virtuality, and in this ambivalence lies its charm. The pictorial testimony is ambiguous, not counting the third part of the video footage. The painting, however, does not deny the artist's typical attention to detail as a method of revealing a reality that is at the same time object and fictional. The symbiosis of the real and the imagined is also expressed by the thematic connection between pornography and marriage, the relationship between the rituals of marriage and sex. The details of the female body, in compositional connection with visual material elements, such as decorative fabric, embroidery or a piece of ornament, lead to an abstract, asymmetrical, enlarged whole. However, even the small elements have an ambivalent effect - the heart is not only a kitsch from the pilgrimage, but also the engine of the pulse of life, the egg, which resembles genitals, hides the germ and symbol of the origin of life. The themes, drawn from porn magazines and the intimacy of real life, undergo a catharsis of creation, art here cleansing passions and covering faces. Rather, it reveals the products of the human mind as an object of collective ownership. Vít Soukup is not one of the painters who hesitate over a clean and empty surface; he does not begin with his own confession. He shares things and concepts with us as the subject of a common testimony. His paintings thus create a kind of still life, referring to our state of mind. Their bright colours spring from the comfort and joy he redistributes among us.

Anti-sexists generally lack the love, tenderness, horniness or courage to be attracted to pornography. Yet, in this exhibition, on the occasion of their wedding anniversary, these are precisely what the two artists lack in their joint presentation. But what about us? If we don't also use our heads for our pleasure, eroticism, entertainment and growth of our personality, no one will do it for us. Sex is a matter of personal freedom and the nature of life, not oppression and violence. It is necessary to know which side to take. Just like Mae West said in the movie to a gunman with his fly bulging, "You got a gun in there, or are you glad to see me ?"...We should know how to answer.

Vlasta Čiháková-Noshiro