Suppose we take a look at Igor Faško's recent works. In that case, one cannot deny that what makes the strongest impression is the author's achievement of a higher degree of painterly freedom and a visible enhancement of sovereignty with which he uses his usual means of expression. Unlike many of his previous works, the current pieces are liberated from the need for any rationalizing interpretation, and instead, they focus on the processual construction of the flows of lines and their mutual interactions within the space. This broad spectrum of pictorial variations, purposefully based on a combination of elements of systematicity and spontaneity, thus achieves almost universal artistic qualities related to the general development of art, which flows independently of the visual trends and interpretative patterns of the immediate present.

Lujza Kotočová

 

Igor Faško is a Slovak Artist born in Germany (Treuenbrietzen). His pictures and objects result from a particular manifestation of post-modern re-arrangement of contentual and formal impacts eventuating into immutable constructive stylistics. His art pieces known for their formal pregnancy and contrasting polychromy are found in a number of private and public collections both in Slovakia and Germany.Attributes of his inner world such as the preference for alternative music genres of the 70s - 80s, poetry and art philosophy, have been transformed into a code language that is identifiable through the ever-present spatial structure, chromatic chord formation and highly abstract objectivity. This reduced objectivity comes to the fore in geometrical formations which suggest a cipher of imprecise objectivity from architectural units such as objects or from zoomorphic abbreviations. These aesthetically extremely effective works draw an observer into a multidimensional world where the totality of individual reality perception emerges from many angles at the same time. In his extraordinary version of factual painting, Igor Faško presents a playful hint of the object that is structurally dismantled in a labyrinthine space. The intentions of the abstract and the representational, the ornamental and the pragmatic, the flat and the urbanised explode here.

Miroslav Haľák

The theme of dreams in Igor Faško's works is becoming secondary, gone are the colourful playful mandalas and vivid bright colours; the almost reckless joyfulness of his previous works has been substituted by self-reflection, critical thinking and more complex and profound questions.The theme of myth and its formal representation has recently moved to worlds of personal experiences and situations; to reactions to concrete events, things that happen around us all the time; to personal myths, moments and situations. This is also evident in his architectural works – take for example the shift from the revolutionary architectonic concept of interior in the now nonexistent avantgarde and surreal restaurant (U zlého námorníka Bratislava 1992, together with the most inspiring sculptor Peter Strassner) to the Crying Fountain in the Park of Forgotten Neighbours and Holocaust Memorial in Zvolen (2012).The extinct rural world or imaginary architectural landscapes in surreal form are no longer the leading theme or leitmotiv of Igor Faško's works. He has become more focused on human relationships such as those between men and women; and problems of coexistence. As he considers these themes, his works become darker, more meditative, less joyful but perhaps more philosophical. He attempts to express this by colour moods in combination with more abstract shapes of stylized human bodies and less cubistic torsos or poses.These poses sometimes express hopeless struggles of subjects, their apparent victories or their failure to resist temptation.The intensity of clean vivid colours has shifted towards monochrome or even black and white oil paintings. The 3D effect is no longer reached only by creating three layers of surfaces but his work has moved into the realm of shadow play using 2D means of expression in an attempt to create the illusion of multidimensional image but more often there are only planes formally differing from each other in colour and colour tones.Igor Faško's artistic records thus become more like personal considerations of what goes on in the world around us, things that we are all worried about. It is an account of crisis that has affected not only the country and economics but social structures and human relationships as well. The painting becomes crisis and vice versa.The artist's most recent paintings such as Seven Heroes/The Magnificent Seven, Comeback, Crisis, Up or Down, and Ontogenesis represent his reaction to the world today which he feels – and we cannot blame him – is increasingly becoming black and white; lacking compassion and companionship, elementary empathy and solidarity. The paintings sometimes resemble helpless screams at the impossibility to find solutions, but there are still flashes of attempts to find childlike solutions, maybe na?ve and certainly poetical. These attempts lead to emotional fireworks even in the case of Faško's more pesimistic themes which is probably the reason why he chooses large canvases.Pesimistic themes can be seen even in his sculptures typically created by intersecting planes and segments and vertical building up to achieve the dynamic of movement. These sculptures are also becoming more aggressive, their corners and edges are sharper. They bear the names of mystical figures, they convey mythological meanings of vanity and destruction or they refer to primitive nomad plays, such as the Shepherd's Prayer, bringing hope and solutions of the already mentioned critical situations. His latest sculptures also show a shift from the abstract toward the concrete, or more precisely: the synthesis of both. He creates figures and female and animal torsos which are often in juxtapositions and their interaction helps him to define relationships. Especially the works In Expectation, The Good Venus, Athanor, Hierosgamos give the impression of solution and result. But at the same time they symbolize people hunts where not only victims but hunters themselves become prey to the anthropocentric monster/symbol. Some metallic glazes on ceramic objects accentuate feelings of coldness and existential estrangement. But they also emphasise their strength and meaning even if it is often ambivalent. Cold metallic glazes have been recently replaced by taller darker figures, made from crudely modelled chamotte clay like the one called Baal; rather threatening, strong but joyful in a sofisticated way and probably evil too.We all have it in our subconscious, the great desire for logic, we all want the world to be explicable, to have same sort of order. Because our world is becoming more chaotic and certainly worse. I am afraid that this desire gets stronger as we grow older. We often get that feeling of hopelessness. Paintings and sculptures lately created by Igor Faško can help us to fulfill this desire, partly at least. I am convinced that this is what he strives for now.

Martin Ciel