The Key to the Field

For different reasons, everyday life in the countryside was the focus of painters through time and space. Claude Monet’s Haystacks, Van Gogh’s The Potato Eaters, Millet’s The Gleaners, and Wood’s American Gothic are only some examples of artists sourcing their inspiration away from the cities where they would exhibit. And while it’s understandable that someone in the late 19th or early 20th century would be interested in portraying something so omnipresent, it is somewhat unusual to see a young artist from Central Europe interested exclusively in this subject. But for Martin Kačmarek, the countryside, or more precisely, farming and everything about life at the farm, is the subject that fully encompasses his artistic practice and life in general. So for his solo presentation with Tuesday to Friday, the Slovakian artist has been given The Key to the Field to reveal the plight, humor, and drama of farming life in the 21st century.

With traditional painting background and appreciation for the works of fellow countrymen such as Ivan Štubňa, Ernest Zmeták, Mária Medvecká, or Béla Bacskai from Hungary, Kačmarek’s first experience with painting was en plein air. As a way of filling time between tasks at the family farm, his imminent surrounding was a perfect setting for these early explorations, which hasn’t changed much since. But the focus, the tools, the approach, and the concept completely shifted as he started getting more interested in the dynamics of the life surrounding agriculture. Getting more familiar with the mentality behind it, first-hand experiencing the envy, judgment, mistrust, and taunting, prompted him to develop a way to capture the emotive dynamics that take place once the machines are off and the tools are resting. But instead of mocking the life that is removed far from the urban mainstream, the very particular psychological extremes and their origins proposed themselves as the main subjects. Fueled by the thinning of natural resources, changing global climate, and the introduction of stricter regulations based on socioeconomic or environmental concerns, the rivalry and competitiveness became more evident. The same charisma prompted the popularization of this scene through YouTube channels or video games such as Farming Simulator, backed by global interconnectivity and digital technology.

Although seemingly working down the path paved by genre painters centuries ago, significant tweaks remove this body of work from simply depicting aspects of everyday life. By replacing plein air with screenshots from the aforementioned video game, Kačmarek works with more universal, ready-made backdrops that are already swathed in evocative light settings and atmosphere. At the same time, he follows his early interest in depicting particular environments together with their nuanced qualities. Pushing their intensity to the cinematic sphere, the scenes of sneaky farmers spying on their neighbors, sabotaging each other’s efforts, or dealing with unlucky circumstances, become more real and relatable. The atmosphere of treachery and scheming is further underlined with a series of Richter-like works on paper depicting particular, mostly technical details of tools and machines. So instead of creating work about human nature or speaking of behavioral psychology, the focus is narrowed to a certain demographic and their particular rituals, habits, or ways. But only as a storyline that connects landscapes and rural scapes that the artist is interested in portraying. To convey the actual simplicity of life at the farm, the images are rendered to a certain degree of realism, holding onto their authenticity and dirtiness. Almost exclusively working with the airbrush, the thin layers of acrylic paint convey the rich surfaces scarred with labor and weather. Familiar with the subject matter and committed to exposing the laboriousness, Kačmarek pays homage to this essential activity and the tough lives of people practicing it while occasionally nodding at its somewhat farcical aspects. Critiquing greed, envy, and the competitive aspects reveal his appreciation for «do-nothing farming» methods developed by Japanese philosopher and farmer Masanobu Fukuoka. Ultimately, his reveal of farming’s shifty side can be seen as a metaphor for promoting a more harmonious lifestyle in tune and coexistence with others and nature’s principles.