Sculpture Line
Prague 2024

For twenty long years, an extraordinary object has been hiding unnoticed on Italy's Lago di Como. A work called Acquae, which materializes the idea of the world-famous architect Jan Kaplický about the future of bottled water consumption in public spaces. Until 2024, it was only seen by visitors to the Triennale di Milano and the 9th Biennale di Venezia in Venice. After that, Acquae was hidden from public view. Was it a lucky coincidence? It was an inevitable fate. After two decades of resting in obscurity, the steel drop was noticed during a visit to Milan by the renowned British architect Lord Norman Foster, who was linked to Jan Kaplicky not only by profession but also by friendship. His discovery began to write a new, happier chapter in the story of Acquae. After negotiations with the manufacturer of the installation, it was decided that Jan Kaplický's object would return to the Czech Republic. Many thanks to Eliška Kaplický Fuchsová, founder of the Kaplicky Centre Foundation, who guaranteed its safe transport to the Czech Republic. This was arranged by Art Lines. The reconstruction of the work was undertaken by the sculptor Lukáš Rais, who with his team restored it to its original lustre over a period of four months. Now Acquae stands before you again in its original splendour, as a legacy of a Czech visionary whose work changed the way we look at the essence of modern architecture. And thanks to you, it will not fall into oblivion.

Perception of space | My job as a sculptor is to work with a given space. I change the energy of that space - I spice it up, animate it, transform it, sometimes violently, sometimes subtly. It depends on my feelings and sensations. Inventing shape | My work is a conscious and unconscious play with material. Many times I surprise myself with what is happening in front of me, such a small birth under my own hands, without pain, without thinking as if by chance, at the same time every piece, the smallest piece has its exact place and could not be anywhere else. It's all up to my emotion and feeling. Feeling, timelessness | I don't want to convey any idea, any story, any actual issue. I don't want my work to evoke any emotion in you. Thinking is pigeonholing, comparing, sorting, solving, judging based on experience, i.e. the past. Emotions are overwhelming, paralyzing, lacking in subtlety, and also based on past experiences, conscious or unconscious. The author's task | My task is to make you forget yourself and time, at least for a split second. Don't think, don't speculate what the author meant by the work, don't judge or measure. Just perceive, feel and be, you will become the work, the sculpture, inwardly. A strange silence and peace will spread within you. It's up to you to feel and feel.

Two separate statues "Deer" and "With Dog" have joined together between the buildings of the National Theatre to form a new story named after the Roman goddess of hunting "Diana". But the name is not essential and it is up to the people who pass by how they interpret the meeting of the two statues in the context of the theatre space. Again, the structure on the surface of the statues plays an important role here. It connects the two sculptures formally, obscuring their realistic details and leaving it up to everyone to subconsciously place them in the sculptures.

The sculpture was created by joining two sculptures created in previous years. Six male figures with outstretched arms completed the full sculpture of five sharks. Two different worlds combined into unreal story of humans and animals are linked by the formal contrast of vertical of the male figures and the horizontality of the swimming sharks. The combination of sharks and male characters in the park, a community is created that relies on fantasy and playfulness of park visitors and which, despite its unrealistic and varying interpretations open to different interpretations and interpretations of the story, its shapes and materials are quite natural and naturally.  

According to the Dictionary of Foreign Words, fragment means an incomplete work of art. So why am I exhibiting something that is incomplete and therefore only a fragment? Because the final form of the work can be created by the viewer according to his imagination. And imagination is infinite...

Just as the razor, for example, contains a hidden murder in its name, so the ladder contains the taking of Christ down from the cross. And you can take anything off. Like a statue from a pedestal...

The work has a weight of approx. 1840 kg (3.4 x 1.15 x 1.47 m height) and we can reach it by hand from the parking space to a maximum distance of 12 m. It is not a boat in the true sense of the word. It is and it isn't. But everyone who sees it calls it that, so I guess it is. It's more of a rudimentary symbol of a boat, although in its use it's another piece from my workshop on the theme of the author's "Chairs for the City". I see the symbol as a metaphor for our time, as a vessel on which we all sail together. Depending on our personal settings, we understand that voyage as either joy and mutual friendly communication or fear and struggle. I breathe for the former, which is why this "boat" is so big and colorful. Sit on it for a while with friends, or complete strangers.

First of all, I thought this organic form of a spiral could be a counterpoint to the place's strong, mighty, and cold architecture. You can go inside it and feel a completely different space, as the spiral draws you inside it, away from the concrete, stone, and glass, into another world. I think the spiral at this place can provide a contrast point between the architecture on the one side and the trees in the park on the other side. All my sculptures have organic and soft forms and because they are always put in the urban space, they are counterpoints to the architecture.

"Matter Fores", the contents of the holes are also matter and the drilling from the side shows it to be another form of matter, perhaps part of a ritual object or used for some other unknown purpose.

The monumental golden fly depicts the controversy over what everyone wants.The sculpture was inspired by Adolf Heyduk's poem and the fascination with the insect itself. The fly, so small, useless and annoying, yet beautiful when viewed in detail under a microscope. A fascinating biological machine that we are unable to perceive with the naked eye. And that is why it has been magnified to a superhuman scale, so that its individual details can be admired, and so that when confronted, a polemic can be stirred up over its own greatness and perhaps even over happiness, so fragile, so seemingly complex and yet sometimes so easy when one is able to perceive the littlethings.

The Jahmal sculpture is a real connection between the New York and Czech worlds on the theme of transgender from 2018 and at the same time a difference. It is a mataphor for the complicated finding of one's own identity, the acceptance of oneself, the transformation and at the same time the inner struggle of not fitting into one's own body. The stitching with leather symbolizes the surgical process.

The steel objects combine abstraction and realism, because they react naturally to the space around them thanks to the properties of the stainless steel from which they are made. Depending on their internal shape, they mirror the surrounding world several times over with their constant movement, changes and rhythm. The work entitled Trichodon is the artist's largest public space realization to date.

You may not know this, but Jakub Flejšar is a snowboarder and a snowboard coach, and they, as is well known, like to move and run and then also rest. And because Jakub is also a sculptor, he wants his sculptures to make that experience visible. In a stylized and humorous way.

Forest. Nostalgia for the vanishing wilderness. In a row of "parked" soft matter, they cling to horizontal trunks as the soul clings to the axis of its existence. At the same time, they carry their personal stories "on their backs".

Michal Trpák belongs to artists for whom art is a challenge to communicate and an incentive to develop their imagination. His ten-legged, striped Mazlik grazes on the grass like an overgrown stuffed animal. It may be made of concrete and marble, but it still beckons to be stroked, as the artist encourages.

One of the most renowned Czech architects Martin Rajniš likes to cross borders. He creates objects that become distinctive works of art with aesthetic, social and utilitarian functions. Hostivař's Včelín refers to medieval towers with its historicizing octagonal shape and weathervane. But of course, it is primarily home to a bee colony that produces unique golf honey.

It's been a while since architecture has seen itself in artistic practices, and vice versa. Especially the transformation and play of facades. The recently deceased sculptor Jiří Beránek is a shining example of this, as the sculptural cladding of the main building of the Hostivař golf complex has made not only this architecture and its architect famous worldwide, but also the sculptor who invented this cladding so uniquely.

David Černý's dominant sculpture In Utero is one of his most important works. In Utero, a six-metre sculpture of a pregnant woman kneeling and holding her head, made of stainless steel, can be perceived by everyone in their own way, but we offer one possible interpretation.

The Fall from 1967 is an emblematic work by Stanislav Kolíbal, a doyen of Czech art and probably the most internationally known Czech artist today. The work was created at the height of the free upsurge of Czech society and art during the increasingly relaxed "sixties", but its message seemed to foreshadow what would become reality in just one year: the fall from freedom into more than twenty years of normalization.

Lukáš Rais's work is characterized by the use of industrially produced components, especially metal rubes. The cluster of pipes placed in the Hostivař playground proves the correctness and expediency of this way. It can be read equally well as an aesthetic achievement or as a certain metaphor for the existence of man in contemporary society.

When looking at Chramost's work Shark in the Gulf, memories of Spielberg's famous film Jaws will surely come to mind, which at the time terrified audiences. The shark's fin, however, is made of concrete, so it is stable and not life-threatening.

Scattered around the golf course were stone jewels - sculptures by Pavel Opočenský, for whom stone is a challenge to make it transparent and lighter, and to work with it as surprisingly as this hard and material medium allows.

Michal Trpák probably already knows that we humans will be replaced by humanoids. We don't know if they will look as the sculptor imagines them, i.e. like marching officials, but certainly when they come in the future to play golf in the future, they might be amused by the sculptor's idea. But beware! Perhaps the artist is warning us with his work if we have not already become humanoids!

The main purpose of this work was to connect the tee box with the fairway on one of the new holes. As there are two holes facing each other on this part of the course, it was necessary to create a covered passage around the lake to ensure the safety of the players. A total of 50 wooden frames in a row with regular spacing create the illusion of impermeable walls when passing through the tunnel. When viewed from the side, however, the tunnel almost completely disappears and only thin partitions remain.

The figure of a walking man with his arm extended forward is perhaps, as the name suggests, a governor, but also a warrior who fell into Hostivaře from another planet. It is assembled like a kit and reminds of sci-fi movies. It's made of metal frames, which confuses the sculptor's fans a bit, because otherwise he likes natural wooden materials.

He created the dwarfs in 1985 for the H. Hůlov Brothers Gallery on their farm in Kostelec nad Černými lesy. The unofficial event was a success and Kurt decided to repeat it in the capital on an official basis at the beginning of perestroika. Not that he longed for artistic satisfaction, let alone fame or money. He was simply annoyed that if artistic ballast, considered art by the cultural strategists, could be presented in public, why couldn't something worthwhile be exhibited at least occasionally... Sculptures of so-called drones, in which the artist addresses his lifelong interest in the human figure. By completely reducing the figure to a lapidary shape, he has achieved a very impressive and, typically for him, humorous, even grotesque result. The sculpture of Trubkouna was made according to the author's precise instructions by the private company for the production of containers Eurointermetall s. r. o. Lucie and Dalibor Kamensky in Rýmařov, who kindly lent the sculpture. (They also made, for example, the sculptures of flowers by Stanislav Diviš, which were on display at his exhibition in Kutná Hora last year.) Large heads or other heads á la bulb is a long-standing theme of Kurt's. The human head is a mysterious object, it can glow with ideas, goodness and can be concreted with stupidity and aggression. And so by looking at them we can meditate on what we are. Heads as non-portraits of all kinds have been perpetrated since at least the mid-1970s. Four two-meter ones were at Jan Palach Square in 2011, at the National Technical Library in 2013, and at the Landscape Festival in Prague. In 2016 in České Budějovice, drunks smashed some of the Headers. Now there is one here. But it's only in our heads. The event is held under the auspices of the Mayor of Prague 2 Ing. Alexandra Udženija.

Forest. Nostalgia for the vanishing wilderness. In a row of "parked" soft matter, they cling to horizontal trunks as the soul clings to the axis of its existence. At the same time, they carry their personal stories "on their backs".

The work consists of three simple bodies that are connected to each other in such a way that a dynamic upward movement from horizontal to vertical is created. A block, a cube and a section of a circle are sufficient to create the impression of movement. The slightly offset arrangement and the implied rotation in the vertical form the basis of the dynamics.

A piece of work from the Drawing in Space (Kresby v prostoru) cycle. The Stumps in the Dark are inspired by children‘s play – waving with a burning stump taken out of the fire. It is an attempt to record and transfer the movement of a hot stump in the dark into a material.

As the artist himself says, he could define his work as geometric abstractionism, if he had to name it. His shapes are always angular and defined. His sculptural work is very closely related to his paintings, and he has been told several times that his sculptures are essentially three-dimensional paintings, which he agrees with. His works have no titles, which he considers a necessity of abstractionism. Basically, he is always looking for a balance between unbalanced shapes.

The initial impulse behind this realization was the intention to complete the intimate place of a private garden with a sitting area with a sculpture. The result was a bench in the form of a stylised woman, who you can snuggle in her arms with a book or sit face to face with a loved one in an intimate conversation. By placing it in a public space, this sculpture takes on another meaning that is already firmly embedded in my work: to act as an island of animation on a street that you usually just pass through, as an opportunity for a brief stop enriched by an unexpected aesthetic sensation, and as a means of resting.