Hynek Alt: Interview

“Hynek Alt: Interview.” 2018. In Unseen Magazine 5 (2018): 119. Presented by Drdova Gallery.

Employing various media, but with the camera as his preferred tool, Hynek Alt (b. 1976, Czech Republic) creates conceptual, open-ended displays inspired by everyday observations. Here, Alt sets out his Deep Purple project, the merits of collaboration, and the illusive quality of a photograph.

Q: How have your studies influenced your artistic practice?

A: I studied photography in Prague in the late nineties, where my education was quite conservative, with an emphasis on craft and technical excellence. I later spent two years at the State University of New York, where I began working with my long-term collaborator Aleksandra Vajd. Here, in more of a fine art context, I acquired a new found distance from professional photography. Both the change in environment and my collaborative practice gave me a different attitude towards the medium. I began to focus more on the exhibition as a final result, using photography as my main tool, yet also incorporating other media, such as video and installation, into my work.

Q: You briefly touched upon your work with Aleksandra Vajd, but what does collaboration elicit that you cannot achieve alone?

A: In any collaborative dialogue, a third identity – with qualities beyond the sum of two collaborators – emerges. I've collaborated with Aleksandra for over ten years, during which time we've developed a way of working where individual input is interwoven until indistinguishable. Collaboration in itself raises questions of authorship, originality and ego, whilst also allowing for the free flow of ideas and constant critique.

Teaching also creates a continuous dialogue that isn't far off collaboration. I consider teaching as part of an array of activities within my practice, and if anything, it always involves specific modes of cooperation.

Q: Could you tell us about the process of developing your Deep Purple series?

A: Deep Purple draws on my personal experiences, which are removed from their initial context so as to resonate with a wider audience. So far, the project consists of four works that – figuratively speaking – are positioned around an empty middle. The works each deal with a different subject, but come together through referring to aspects of photography, or to ways of seeing the world more generally. The combination of images isn't intended to be solved like a puzzle, but I hope that the collisions and resonances between the works reveal new ways of looking at quite ordinary situations.

Q: What is it that, for you, makes the nature of the photograph so illusive?

A: The indexical relationship – the physical relationship between subject and image – tends to define how we understand photographs, and how we distinguish them from other means of representation. Photography has a long history of being used as evidence. A degree of transparency in every image creates a kind of flickering between image and subject. Transparency is something that draws us into images. It makes them appealing, confusing or melancholy. It relates directly to how we see with our eyes, to how much we can observe, and what remains invisible.