Excerpt from an interview about the Levitation statue in Ostrava

Excerpt from an interview about the Levitation statue in Ostrava with a member of the Ostrava 2015 team (Ostrava město kultury), which outlines the background of the creation and realization of the sculpture (from 2010):

Why a woman in a yoga position?

I wanted the space to feel calm. So that one can rest there and wait for his train to arrive. And not to put them in a dynamic attitude that surrounds them all day. I immediately had the idea to make a levitating woman. I was inspired by yoga, but it’s not exactly a yoga position, because I wanted to elevate it, not directly imitate and copy them. At the same time, she is a woman like a Christian symbol, a woman like Mary. Someone that meditates and is at peace.
Can you tell us a little more about Levitation before its reveal?

Her gaze is meditatively downward, and her eyes can theoretically reflect people, because those eyes are made of stainless steel. Beneath it is a symbolic puddle or water, which is represented by a stone pavement. I wanted the motif of water there because it is a motif of purification. We had to move the installation of the statue out of fear that it would be flooded.

How tall is the sculpture?

Two meters. If she stood up, she would be about four. And she’s black. Platinum bronze as a material is naturally black, and it occurred to me that the Ostrava black is also symbolic. I made a smaller version of the black levitating woman five years ago and loved it. Before, I made sculptures very colorful – in pink and flesh colors. Black also seems to me to be a form of purification. It’s not something bad, dark to me, but rather something deep like the night. And then she is also very, very realistic. It’s definitely not an erotic sculpture, it’s purely my personal approach to how I do these things. Just be prepared (laughs).

We are not afraid 🙂 After all, it is always said how straightforward Ostrava is…

That is also the reason why the statue is the way it is.

By the way, who was the prototype for Levitation?

I cannot answer that clearly. As I already mentioned, there are several variants of the “Levitation” statues. And it is typical for my work that I use more than one model for one sculpture (sometimes up to ten). I almost never have someone really close to the model. At the same time, I worked only from my head, from memory. The sculpture “Levitation” for Ostrava, which was cast in bronze, was created based on the experience of the earlier small sculpture last year during the spring and summer. I only modeled some details (face, hands, legs) according to the occasional “auxiliary” models – female friends – one lady is a painter and two are excellent sculptors.

How long did it take you to realize the sculpture itself?

More than a year. We started working on it in April, it was modeled in mid-summer, and then we created auxiliary models. It was cast in bronze during the winter and a fortnight ago the patina was finished. It took the first two months to figure out how to do it differently. I wanted it to symbolize that Ostrava is undressed, waiting. In Levitation, everyone will see what they want to see. Whoever wants to see erotica in it will see erotica. Whoever wants to see meditation will see meditation. And whoever recognizes an ironic allusion in it will not be wrong either, because they are there.

We started, we created. You speak in the plural…

Since it was a very demanding job, especially in terms of time, my longtime colleague and friend, the sculptor Michal Šmeral, helped me make the model. We have been working together for several years and help each other on similar projects. Casting such a big thing is a bit more demanding after all. Last year (note 2009) we successfully completed the project together – “Monument to Operation Anthropoid” – which is a monument to the assassination of R. Heydrich in Prague. We won the competition in 2008. We also managed to get the highest goal in the competition for the monument to Nikola Tesla in Prague, but in the end the councilors decided to cancel the whole project.

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