Patrik Proško

A Window was created through an intervention into a found painting: a reproduction on canvas whose surface had been manually treated with transparent acrylic paste approximately twenty years ago to make it appear, at first glance, like an original painting. The raised brushstrokes, however, do not correspond to the original image, or do so only very loosely. Against the underpainting of a black circle, the relief of the individual brushstrokes is highlighted with white lines. This creates a kind of “X-ray” window into the surface structure of the painting, while at the same time graphically abstracting its original motif. Today, similar reproductions imitating the gestures of a painter’s hand are also produced mechanically. The found painting thus paradoxically represents a handmade “original fake,” into which the subsequent intervention introduces yet another layer between original, reproduction, and imitation.