RESURRECTION

Zdeněk Sokol

Zdeněk Sokol is undergoing his artistic resurrection. After ten years living as a hermit, Sokol, a member of the Bratrstvo (Brotherhood) artistic group, found renewed motivation to reach for his camera in this series of spiritually ethereal portraits.

“We are all part of a collective consciousness that creates the reality of the world in which we live. Within ourselves, each of us has the essence of divinity; we are each a piece of the Creator’s consciousness. I try to show people around me a part of my inner self, to offer them a glimpse into my soul, and perhaps share a bit of my energy. I’m prepared to give of myself to the very last atom of my existence.”

Zdeněk Sokol

Jaroslav Valečka

The seemingly idyllic paintings of Jaroslav Valečka systematically draw attention to the realities of life in the former Sudetenland. They revive places through the telling of grim tales of solitude which would otherwise remain overlooked or forgotten entirely.

“The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The person who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever seen before.”

Albert Einstein

František Skála

Multi-talented artist and visionary František Skála often creates his works from objects and materials that originally had another function or context. He gives them new life and writes alternative scenarios of existence through their installations.

“No scientist knows the chemical composition of the primordial elements. And yet it is with them, under the right conditions through both known and previously unknown pathways, that new lifeforms, thoughts, scientific discoveries, and works of art are created.”

František Skála

Hideo Takeda

Hideo Takeda’s meticulously detailed animal skeletons look as if they’ve been extracted from an anatomical atlas of extinct animals. The Japanese caricaturist captures their creepiness with colourful accents and breathes new life into them with a touch of humour.

"The perfectly designed skeletons of archaic animals, preserved for hundreds of millions of years, far exceed the most beautiful sculptural works by artists of all time. As a young artist, I couldn’t work directly with such rare protected remains, so I toured museums and poured the results of my analytical work into my book Altamira in 1979 and then reworked in graphic form in 1994. 

I came to the conclusion that the study of archaeological remains reinterpreted in an artistic manner was a key and revealing theme of my work, and I wanted to continue down this path. I soon discovered, however, that there are only so many skeletal remains in the world and that people don’t actually express much interest in old bones. So I began using other techniques to create works on completely different topics and my youthful explorations gradually faded away. 

I’m especially delighted that in faraway Prague in the newly-reopened Galerie Arcimboldo, my old bones are being returned to the centre of exhibition attention. There’s a chance that this could reawaken my youthful belief in the meaningfulness of this way of communicating artistically. Perhaps this good news from Prague will spark new inspiration for my future work."

Hideo Takeda