Jiří Petrbok

Über Jiří Petrbok

In Jiří Petrbok’s painting you come across a very strong visual phenomenon, which is the intersection of imagination and the objective form. It is the image creation that models figures’ resulting forms. For the artist human figures are mainly a strange displaced element that when thrown out of the window returns through the door. These phantoms arising from a grey area of the subconscious are rather something than someone. Automated machines are portrayed as bearers of frightening traits, which remind us of something, refer to something, generally to some objective physical debilitation – of movement, in breathing, with sight, etc. The body combusts, burns, is sticky, it runs and melts away somewhere. It disappears. With such set-up, claustrophobic nudes Petrbok makes light of elegant situations through humour based on the actors‘ poor motor skills or the embarrassment of unexpected meetings of „something with someone.“