16 Sketches of Dialogue

Jan Jedlička / Switzerland / 2002 / 16 min.

synopsis

At the beginning of the new millennium, Jan Jedlička received artistic support from the Swiss insurance company Swiss Re, for which he made the short film Air (2001) and also a portrait of its conference centre, the Centre for Global Dialogue near Zurich. The austere architecture springs to life in a dialogue with the landscape, guests, and staff; and thanks to Jedlička's perspective, it no longer seems so stiff and uneasy.

biography

Jan Jedlička was born in 1944 in Prague, where he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts from 1962 to 1968. A year after the occupation, he emigrated to Switzerland where he ended up deviating from his usual direction of fantastic realism. He uses various techniques and mediums in his work – illustration, watercolor, photography, earth pigments, mezzotint, serigraphs, and film. His recurring cycles explore the landscape in terms of movement and time (southern Tuscany, Ireland, Wales, Prague and the surrounding area), but are able to capture – sharply and occasionally with a malicious joke – the shades of human nature and community.