Patrik Proško

Shapes of Time II places two states of the same image side by side. One half remains as the historical painting has survived to the present day, while the other is covered by a black field onto which the network of cracks from the original painting has been traced in white lines. The same principle continues across the original frame, which thus becomes part of the intervention. The division of the painting reveals two ways of reading it. On one side, the figurative religious motif remains visible; on the other, the subject and colour disappear, shifting attention to the physical history of the work itself. The craquelure, normally perceived merely as a trace of age on the surface of the painting, becomes independent and forms an abstract drawing. The black underpainting conceals the original image, while at the same time revealing something that had been present within it all along. The two halves therefore do not represent two different realities, but two layers of the same work: an image created by human hands and a structure gradually inscribed into it by time.