2024-07-02 13:31:44
About 50 works, from self-portraits to pictures of politicians comparable to former president Miloš Zeman to pop stars, are included within the new exhibition of works by Adam Štech on the Dox Modern Artwork Middle in Prague. It began final week and can final till October 6. Though it’s named after the well-known French author Michel Houellebecq, it doesn’t illustrate his work or pay tribute to him.
Adam Štech is ironic and caricaturing in direction of his environment, himself and the author, which connects him exactly with Houllebecque, mentioned gallery spokeswoman Karolína Kočí.
“It is not even eight years since I learn Houellebecq’s first ebook Map and Territory, which has grow to be probably the most basic for this exhibition. There’s even a piece that’s straight associated to the outline of the picture that seems on the primary pages of this novel,” he factors out A nod to the novel, which was printed by Odeon in 2011 within the Czech translation by Alan Beguivin. “The exhibited work weren’t created straight beneath the affect of Houellebecq, we have been fairly searching for moments and themes that we’ve got in frequent with this French creator,” he provides.
Curator Otto M. City conceived the exhibition as a traditional storytelling. “Proper on the primary ground, the viewer is confronted with a collection of a number of self-portraits of the artist. Right here the creator introduces himself. Solely then do different figures, motifs and themes start to look. All that is elaborated on a novel stage. Like when the reader is launched to the primary characters at the start of the ebook characters and whereas studying, the tales of these characters develop additional and additional,” City compares.
The portray exhibition surprisingly opens with a sculpture, specifically a larger-than-life bust of Michel Houellebecq. It was established in 2017.
The identical face can also be depicted in Štech’s two years youthful double portrait Žižek and Houellebecq, the place the French author is proven alongside the Slovenian thinker. A distinct model of the identical theme is from 2020.
Adam Štech: Žižek and Houellebecq, 2020. | Picture: DOX
Within the first corridor of the Dox, guests can primarily see Štech’s self-portraits. Based on the painter, Houellebecq’s novels are sometimes introspective and written within the first particular person. “That is why there’s additionally a transparent phenomenon of the primary particular person, i.e. the creator, in my work,” explains Štech.
Based on curator City, he created a particular, recognizable and on the identical time variable type.
“He works with numerous references, for instance to early modernism, cubism, but in addition to the historical past of artwork. Typically in his work there are references each to the artwork of the outdated masters and to up to date work, however on no account within the first place. A lot of the messages stay considerably hidden,” he thinks City.
Adam Štech graduated from the Prague Academy of High quality Arts within the portray studios of Jiří Sopek and Vladimír Skrepel. In 2011, he received the Critic’s Award for Younger Portray.
Lately, he has ready solo exhibitions for the DSC Gallery or the Václav Špála Gallery, and from overseas establishments he has offered himself on the Ascaso Gallery in Miami, USA, or on the Prague Home in Brussels.