1987 - Kunstmuseum Aarhuf, Galerie Image, Denmark
La Maison Internationale Rennes, France
Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark
Rencontres Photographique, Lorient, France

1988 - Mai Photographique Quimper, France
Vychodoslovenská galerie Kosice, Czechoslovakia
Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco, USA
Forum les Photographiques, Toulouse, France
Galerie Hyppolyte, Helsinki, Finland (with Jánsky and Banka)

1989 - Galerie Fronta, Praque, Czechoslovakia
Malá galerie Stavoprojektu, Brno, Czechoslovakia

1990 - Galerie Saint Cyprien, Toulouse, France
Groll Galerie, Naarden, Netherlands
Galerie Le Parvi, Tarbes, France
Espace Gerard Philipe, Jarny, France
Galerie Le Triangle, Rennes, France

1991 - Galleria Cons Arc, Chiasso, Switzerland
Galerie Barockschlössl, Mistelbach, Austria (with M. Schepers)
Bibliotheque Henri Vincent, Talant, France
Galerie Arts, Amsterdam, Netherlands

1992 - Galerie Faber, Wien, Austria
Grollgalerie, Naarden, Netherlands
Musee de la photographie, Charleroi, Belgium
Centre culturel, Hennebont, France

1993 - Galerie Sephiha, Bruxelles, Belgium
Galerie Nei Liight, Dudelange, Luxemburg

1994 - Malá galerie VÚVL, Brno, Czech Republic

1995 - Fotogalerie Wien, Wien, Austria

1996 - Galerie Vrais Reves, Lyon, France (with I. Pinkava and V. Jirásek)

Collections:

Moravská galerie Brno, Czech Republic
Galerie vytvarného umûní in Hodonín, Czech Republic
Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA
Museum Sztuki, Lodz, Poland
JCA Tokyo, Japan
Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, USA
Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark
Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
Art Institute, Chicago, USA
Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Museum Ludwig, Köln, Germany
Musée de la Photografhie, Charleroi, Belgium
Museum voor Fotografie, Antwerpen, Belgium
La Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France
Musée Nicéphore Niépce Chalon-Sur-Saone, France

Motto: “The face is like a name.” (Milan Kundera, Immortality)

At home in time (3)
The figures are at home in a space, which is divested of the concrete attributes of place and time.
The forgotten object could have been in its place since yesterday; it could still be there at this moment. Maybe I will find it there tomorrow.
My “now” is compatible with their “now”, which lasts limitlessly.
I am with them.

Gesichtsreiche (7)
We live gesichtsreiche Zeit. Faces look at me from billboards, they look from the pages of newspapers, they look (= frown) on meeting.
"The author of the editorial himself has been depicted in a small photograph above his text, evidently at the same place as every week. The smiles of the astronauts have been enlarged in the report on astronomy, and also in all the advertisements, on typewriters, on furniture, on carrots, there were faces, nothing but faces. She looked through the magazine again from the front page to the back; she counted: ninety two photographs, on which there was merely a face; forty one photographs, on which there was both a face and a figure; ninety faces on twenty three photographs, in which there were groups of figures, and just eleven photographs, in which people played a secondary role or were completely absent. Altogether they were two hundred and twenty three faces in the magazine." (Milan Kundera, Immortality)
By capturing the face I name the man, and place him. I place and forget. I forget, because I am not responsible.
Man passes through the centuries and names things. He gives them names - faces. Things exist, and man gives them purpose. People are as they are, but thanks to their faces they are (at least apparently) placeable and definable. Bodies are there to bear faces. The face is the meeting point (Treffpunkt). The face is a unique name and, at the same time, a general symbol.
A smile, eyes open wide in astonishment, a grimace of pain or pleasure, tears ...
Figures with faces are placed; they undergo their fate. I can let them move me; I can stop and think. From the face of the figures, however, I know that this is their fate, that it’s not me. I can (with relief) continue on my way.
I can slip by their fate.

Naming (8)
Does the world have an order, which is shaken by chaos, or is disorder the natural state of the world, and order merely my own fiction? My desire to take part in its creation?
If I cannot create a universe of things, I create a universe of naming.
I give things their faces.

Gesichtslose (12)
The face is a meeting point. If the face is missing, I meet with a figure, with its fate. I cannot pass by outside its situation. The figure has no name. The figure is a man. It could be me. I am with it. (I am together with it.)

Removal of the face (23)
The face was removed from the figure right after birth, when it saw the light of the world in negative, dark on a light background. Even then, it was prevented from asserting in an unguarded moment its customary descriptive naming by means of the face.
The figure came to terms with the loss of its face, or tries to identify itself with a gesture. The gesture is the face of a figure without a face.
The gesture of living
Figures without faces do not say what they are like, but how they are.
The gesture is the name of a figure, which says how it is.
The figure is in a space, which is not a room, a field, a metro carriage.
The space is the world.
Along with the figures in it, I am my life.

Tomás Mestánek, Brno 1993 - 1995

Technical notes:

1. I do not emphasis fashionable (receding) postmodernism - I prefer the tendency towards (some kind of) order.
2. (In the subtext) the tendency towards the search for essences is emphasised (words such as “the essence of human existence”, “archetypes” and so on, are, however, deliberately not used - since I feel them to be habitual historical clichés.)
   For this reason, the philosophical tone (extremely gently!) is phenomenological/existential. (Those so inclined may recognise a key Heidegger theme in the first note: Sein und Zeit.)
3. 3. Austrians may, to some extent, associate the form of the text with the slogan-ridden notes of Wittgenstein (“A logical/philosophical tract”). (Wittgenstein’s initial viewpoint: the world is not a collection of thing, but of facts. Later, however, he himself returns to a conception of the world as it is, and not as the meanings we have (capriciously) given it.)
4. Since this is not a study, but rather a collection of ideas, I would leave the text in the first person - it is subjectively more insistent.
5. On translating:
   - Differentiate “sein” and “existieren” for the Czech “je”. (If the translator does not know where to use which word, then the fault is in my writing.)
   - The word “gesichtsreiche” may not exist, though it easily could exist - it is the opposite of the word “gesichtslose” (= faceless).
6. Quoted from the Czech edition (ATLANTIS, Brno 1993):
   - motto, pg. 39
   - extract, pg. 38