Aestheticized Action, 2010

...The main and seemingly invisible theme of Aestheticized Action is the creative process in photography. The author presents a summary of his own relation to photography as a means of visual expression and creative manifestation. He is confronted with a situation in which the visual qualities of the image lose their relationship with the act of creation and focuses on the fulfilment of a common - his own or more or less shared - trend.
The photographs of Martin Tůma are a mixture of landscape, performance, and staging; they evoke the topics of lighting, manipulation, and camouflage. Aestheticized Aesthetic Action represents an admitted heritage of the experiences of photography. In order to realize itself, it must deny these experiences. Performance in an open landscape substitutes established photographic practices including post-production. With a strong vision of an image, staged and acted by the author in the open, it uses to the maximum extent possible the environment. It usurps the „graphic material“ of the winter landscape – snow, imitating it and manipulating it with a matter-of-fact approach to natu re, so typical for humans. The environmentalism of these images is rooted in the author’s deep perception of the landscape and himself set in it. The idea of the world around us is a reflection of our own life. The author’s confrontation with the medium is indicated by his perhaps unconscious reference to the works of Kazimir Malevich and his theory of negation of rules of painting. The virtuosity of every art form ceases to be a challenge once it stagnates trying to be reach perfection and losing the essence of creativity and liveliness. 

Mgr. Vendula Juřicová