Mixed media, collage, watercolor, gilded
38 × 56 cm (in cutout)
mat, frame, glass
Václav Stratil is an artist who moves between various media, not primarily using them intermedially for his subjects, but rather relating to them and reflecting on the media themselves in the context of contemporary art practice and its place in society. Just as he works with media, or with art in general, he also self-reflectively examines the identity of the artist in today's world. He uses himself as material and an object for many of his significant artistic realisations—performing, photographic, and painted works. He does so with humor, exaggeration, but also with complete seriousness.
He repeatedly returns to painting, which he first engaged with in the 1970s during his university studies in Olomouc, where he reacted to its modernist foundations. He works with text, first in his abstract processual large-format hatched drawings, and later in his pictorial messages and inscriptions. Since the early 1990s, he has focused on the theme of the self-portrait and playing with his own appearance.
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