Patrik Proško

The portrait of the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904) is part of a two-view anamorphic installation, whose opposite side creates a portrait of Bedřich Smetana. Both portraits emerge from a shared set of musical instruments and their parts, which occupy different positions in space while simultaneously forming two distinct pictorial compositions. At the core of the work is not only the existence of two resulting likenesses, but also in the space between them. As the viewer moves around the installation, the portrait of Antonín Dvořák gradually dissolves, the individual objects lose their original pictorial meaning, and from the opposite direction they begin to form the portrait of Bedřich Smetana. A piano, more than a century old, and traditional musical instruments are complemented by contemporary electric and plastic instruments and other modern elements. These extend the temporal frame of the installation and point to the fact that the music of both composers is not confined to the nineteenth century, but continues to enter contemporary interpretations and musical genres.