Jan Smejkal once knew Jan Schoonhoven, with whom he exhibited at the ‘orez’ gallery in The Hague. He also knows Hans Houwing, through whom I came to know Jan Smejkal. Together, we travelled to Berlin to see his work for the first time. The joy was immense: during the first exhibition in 2014, he presented a ‘mirror table’, a base on which layers of old found mirrors were stacked. No broken mirrors, sometimes a little weathered, somewhere a round mirror. The composition reminded me of modernism. This work and the intervention in the space – gallery space bel-etage PHŒBUS•Rotterdam – was sublime and sympathetic: beautiful, but also a bit ‘chance’ because of the found, old mirrors; but above all nice, because the works by Hans Houwing, who carried the solo, were reflected when walking past.
www.ftn-books.com has now some extremely rare Smejkal items available published in the late 70’s for the KUNST PUBLIKATIE/ Gorinchem KUNSTCENTRUM BADHUIS
