ANTHROPOCENE XVI - Waste mine water, coal mine Darkov, Czechia

Used materials: oil paint lamp black, crushed brown coal, anthracite black pigment, crushed rosted coffe beans, canvas

This is one of the works from the cycle "Anthropocene". In this cycle I deal with humanity's ability to transform large landscape units for our own needs using modern technological processes. Often without regard to the possible consequences. The transformation of the landscape then changes not only its external appearance, but ultimately also the behavior of the flora and fauna, which is either completely destroyed or partially adapts within large landscape areas. This change affects both biological and geological processes not only in a given location, but on the entire planet. And this has a negative impact on human society. Some paintings from the “Anthropocene” cycle are created using a combined technique, in which I bring characteristic materials from the depicted location (coal, local deposits, pigments, etc.), which I incorporate into the painting along with other materials such as synthetic asphalt, ash, coffee and natural pigments. The resulting painting is then partly made up of materials from the given area, which help to complete the authenticity of the painting.

The painting depicts the wastewater landscape of the Darkov deep coal mine in Moravian Silesia. A monotonous landscape formed by wastewater lakes, which are divided by artificially piled dams made of clay, stones and tailings excavated from the mines. The trees in the lake have long since died, the trees on the artificial embankments, if they have not died, are fighting for their bare lives. The birds, who have nowhere to hide, have disappeared. The pictorial composition resembles a prehistoric millipede, an arthropod, that made its way through a Carboniferous primeval forest swamp. A swamp that after hundreds of millions of years turned into coal basins. A line made of crushed coal runs along the axis of the image like the spine of a strange creature.