Dedicated  to Dobromila.

A box can isolate, protect, incarcerate, hide, show etc. Are we entering or stepping out of something when getting inside a box?

Petr Krátký’s installation uses even the gallery space, the white cube as a box. We can recognize the black frames of the exhibited pictures in the gallery’s front windows and their black, metallic frames. The prefabricated picture frames (obviously IKEA products) fit well to the ready-madeness of the space. Krátký’s gesture transform them to being parts of the artwork.

He works with ready-made materials in other ways as well. Neither the IKEA frames, nor the gallery space or the cardboard boxes (which were used us industrial wrapper) were made by the creator, at least in the material way. What’s more, even the pictures are discoursive in the same sense, since their materials are the commercial results of the mass production: they’re reproductions of art books and exhibition catalogues.

The reason why Petr Krátký’s installation is unique is that he invites the viewer to reconsider nearly all of the most important questions of art theory. Krátký enters the original paintings with the same curiosity that drove Theo van Doesburg to tilt Mondrian’s world 45 degrees in his Counter-Compositions. He expropriates the artwork, decomposes its elements and rearranges them in his own way. Not necessarily as a statement, rather as a question, an experiment, an offer.

He reflects on the matter of authorship, he questions the issue of originality, ultimately he investigates the substance of the artwork. He analyzes how indispensable parts of a picture are such components as colour, shape or structure. Does the essence of a picture lie in one of these components or in the cooperation of them? Or maybe in something else? Meanwhile he also brings up the relation between production and reproduction and raises the issue of interaction with the viewers.

His expression is pure, clear and disarmingly moderate. Krátký’s installation is an elegant summary of many conceptual discourses.

Miloš Toth

Curator: Martin Prudil