ART GRAND SLAM IN THE NEWS:

CNBC | Tuesday, 24 June 2008 : A segment on Art Grand Slam with Martina and Juro aired during the morning edition of CNBC Europe.

The Independant | Wednesday, 8 May 2008 : A different kind of return from Navratilova - the artist - at Wimbledon

In the fall of 2000, I met Juraj Kralik during the US Open in New York and he asked me to have a look at an artistic project of his. Over a short meeting, he explained to me the gist of the project and gave me a written description of his concept. Since it was well prepared, it attracted my attention and I agreed to become involved. Back then I could not quite imagine how the project would work, but Juro’s enthusiasm convinced me. After a couple more meetings we agreed that we would start in the Revnice clay court tennis club in the Czech Republic. I was happy that the project would start on ‘home soil’, because I wanted to find out how exactly it would work. When I saw a truck parked right outside the club entrance and all the canvases of various sizes and colors being carried from the truck into the club, I realized that Juro was serious about his intention to dedicate three entire days to the project. The results that we achieved on that occasion were pleasantly surprising. We got to know one another better and we created the first tangible result of a work that had been long in the planning.

The pictures convinced me that we should continue our common work and that I personally should do everything I could in order to manage an entire Grand Slam. Naturally, Juro had to accept the fact that we would not always be able to fit our project into the tight schedule that usually awaits me in these places but we did our best to find time when we could.<

This cooperation of ours is an atypical one. I am willing to be managed by somebody who is neither a coach, nor a sparring partner, nor an opponent. He is a special type of fellow player, a type I had never played before. In spite of this, I feel that as a player he is my equal. He even enjoys a bad shot, as he considers it to be an equally important part of this improvisation. I, on the other hand, am fascinated by seeing how every trace, every impression changes the blank canvas, giving it a new meaning. I am leaving on it my message, and the message will remain there.

Nobody can dispute it – this is where the ball fell, there is no point arguing with the umpire, it is a definitive decision. All of this gives the whole project new dimensions. Some works only need one or two shots and the message is clear, others need hundreds of hits.

This reminds me of real matches, some of which I still have in my head – each one was a different story. The same can be said about our pictures – some are easily and quickly won victories, others required many hours of hard work. The good thing is that nobody leaves the court a loser. Everybody wins and both actors are happy with the result. And so, hopefully, are others.I remember a situationin Melbourne two years ago: we started in the afternoon and finished late at night, when the only people left in the club were the two of us and the night guards. We had a great time and created a lot of pictures. Even I got carried away that night, but Juro would probably have had me playing until the wee hours of the morning if I hadn’t finally thrown in the towel! All the surroundings were splattered with colours - The clothes, the shoes, the racket – everything was rendered useless. Useless for normal wearing, that is, but Juro was happy because all of this formed part of our game. I then had to play the entire tournament with coloured legs. Maybe they brought me good luck: I won my first Grand Slam title in many years, the only one that had eluded me until then...

Juro always comes up with something new. That is probably the reason why the whole project has taken so long – we always search for and try out new things. Every time I feel that we are approaching the end, we manage to find yet another interesting option that pushes our project further on. I hope that after the exhibitions in such places as Bratislava, Prague, Paris, Perth and beyond, people will applaud our pieces in galleries as they have applauded my action on tennis courts. Take a look around this page to check out these unique marriages of sport and art. And who knows where we will go from here? Every time we depart from a location, it is always with an ellipsis not a period.