The DOX Centre for Contemporary Art is showing Krištof Kintera, one of the most important contemporary Czech artists. His oeuvre includes sculpture, assemblages and installations, in which he decidedly – and often humorously – gets to grips with contemporary subjects. Switching between the apparently trivial and the deadly serious, his creations contain a lively criticism of hyper-capitalist systems and the ecological questions resulting from them.
Czech and international audiences know Krištof Kintera’s work primarily thanks to his sophisticated kinetic sculptures and monumental, technically demanding installations in galleries and public spaces. In the context of his complex projects, it is hard to imagine more classical artistic methods such as drawing.
Nevertheless, Krištof Kintera describes a significant part of his work that he has been continuously working on for almost two decades as “drawings”. These are in fact almost three-dimensional works of uniform format that most people would consider to be more like collages or assemblages. For Krištof Kintera, however, they are definitely drawings. This is primarily because of how he creates them - spontaneously, quickly, with ease. He creates these straightforward compositions with limited resources - the found and “consumed” objects and materials of our everyday existence. Text often plays an important role in them. An old pillow with eyes made of burnt-out light bulbs “doubts its contribution to evolution”, a crumpled tin sadly announces that it is trying to get itself together every day (Shaping Myself Everyday), a broken TV screen announces with a disappointed expression that “Everything is different”. A carved sign with the words “No One Has Anything” have literally been struck with an axe. Simple yet visually striking arrangements, short punchy texts, playfulness, irony, hyperbole.
Curator: Michaela Šilpochová
"Krištof Kintera: HOW CAN I HELP YOU?"
10 Mar – 20 Aug 2023
DOX Centre for Contemporary Art
Poupětova 1
Prague 7
