The autodidact Zdeněk Janošec (1960), best known under his nickname Benda, is an artistic loner with an intuitive mode of expression. For him, artistic creation is an existential need, a necessity. He blends mysticism, spiritualism, the search for the universal and the connection between human beings and the universe with sexuality and desire. His early work in particular is expressive and brutally provocative, confronting topics of sexuality and death. He also addresses the timeless theme of family, as well as exploring landscape as a reflection of the inner self. His entire oeuvre is imbued with Romantic influences. He develops concise, concentrated expressive resources before suddenly veering away into a different formal realm, and he often creates enigmatic works leading us to question the meaning of our own existence.
Benda’s communication with himself and those around him is complex. For him, a work of art is more than a mere reflection of life: it is a fact of life, something which either confirms or casts doubt on the meaningfulness of the artist’s life. This is why Benda creates and perceives his art very personally – and it is also why he has destroyed his works if he considered them to be failures, bearing witness both to his instability and to his obsessive need to continue in his creative quest. In 1997, he held the solo exhibition The Pavilion of Unease at the Langův Dům gallery in Frýdek-Místek – yet he later destroyed or painted over most of the works that had been displayed there. The current exhibition clearly demonstrates the co-existence of two polar opposites in his work – ease and unease.

Curator: Renata Skřebská

Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava