Patrik Proško

The core principle of Patrik Proško’s work lies in the manipulation of lived reality, most often through a specific method of optical illusion and a variety of artistic devices, with the ability to transform the common world of everyday habitual perceptions into a magical space full of changes and unexpected occurrences. The origins of such thinking are already present in Proško’s fascination with hyperrealism. The artistic effect produced by hyperrealistic sculptures is not merely the result of their extreme precision, but also of the unexpected change in relation to the context of surrounding reality. Sometimes it is through the simulation of an unexpected environment, at other times of a shift in time. His site-specific works in public space also follow up on this principle. They are based on interventions into “the usual”, making visible a “parallel” reality and relating to our everyday lives along with the existential feelings that arise from within. In this way, Patrik Proško tries to change our way of perceiving reality. His interventions into landscape are typical for their careful selection of location, in/dependence on the viewer, and temporariness, but their nonetheless important aspect is also a search for one’s limits, one’s own place in life, and one’s own personal qualities, with the knowledge that transience is the only default value of human life and all being. One of the key motives here are boundaries and their transgression in both subjective and territorial meaning. So far, Proško has created over 70 artistic projects in the territories of 24 states in which he continues to balance on the edge of reality. From its mystifying thematization in the hyperrealistic works and illusionary anamorphous projections he has moved on to working with reality itself, treating it as his painting canvas or sculpting material. Visual art itself has moved into the centre of his attention as both the main topic of reflection, as well as a “method” for life. His usage of classical, but nonetheless “liberated”, artistic techniques is an example of that. By no coincidence does he also speak about some of his interventions into landscape as landscape paintings, or about others as sculptures, although they have been made by paint. A similar case is his method of documentation in which he intentionally photographs his temporary realizations in landscape, made by bio-degradable paint, “as if they were a painting or an image”. His work does not lack broader context referencing to the history of art either, be it the German romantics or the evangelizer of art brut, Jean Dubuffet.

Radek Wohlmuth