Krištof Kintera: Nervous Trees

This autumn, Galerie Rudolfinum will open the 100th exhibition since its founding in 1994. To mark this anniversary, the gallery is hosting a large-scale exhibition project of Krištof Kintera which presents a summary of the last five years of the author’s oeuvre, and features some twenty sculptures, installations and interactive objects.

The exhibition title Nervous Trees references the eponymous objects which will nervously move in the main exhibition hall; in another, the visitor will have to make his way between pedestals made of polystyrene, the cosily familiar thermal insulation material, while its fragments whirling around in the gallery evoke a rather unpleasant snow storm. An important part of the exhibition includes the so-called laboratory, which takes the visitor right into the birthing process of Kintera’s ongoing installation Postnaturalia, about a hundred square metres of artificial landscape made of electronic devices – poetic and, at the same time, drastic. Samples of plastic flowers, files with herbariums and extensive video footage of creation of individual objects act as the landscape elements. The small gallery hall is dedicated to showing, in the form of dozens of drawings, the more intimate side of Kintera’s work. On the contrary, the larger gallery halls will host projects such as Nervous Trees (2013), a pillar made of Knauf mortar Do It Yourself (After Brancusi) (2007), a mouflon rearing to the sky like some creature of legends Electrons Seeking Spirit (2016), and other sculptures. As the first ever public screening, Galerie Rudolfinum is also showing Hands – Tools of Brain, a one-hour edit of approximately seven years’ worth of recorded footage of hands in the studio, as they destroy and test materials and techniques, and produce and assemble individual components of future sculptures and installation.

The exhibition accentuates the collaborative process – seemingly trivial but essential for the functioning and development of any more complex system. At the same time, it references fragility of the relationship between the actors within the system; this is what makes and breaks any such relationship. Kintera likes to say that he greatly enjoys the time in his studio on weekends – when he is there all by himself, free to pursue a different kind of concentration.

Krištof Kintera (*1973) ranks among the best-known Czech mixed media artists. The moment of movement, interaction and the social critique contained in his work springs from a fusion of fine arts, performance and stage design. He is the founder of Jednotka, an experimental theatre ensemble, and the concept author of 4+4 dny v pohybu, an annual festival. His moving works are popular not just for their mechanical excellence but also their playful spirit and humour. The objects have, for the most part, also a deeper purpose than to entertain. As Vršovice patriot and a keen cyclist, Kintera is the author of two atypical monuments in Prague: Z vlastního rozhodnutí dedicated to people who committed suicide, and Bike to Heaven, in memory of Jan Bouchal, the founder of Auto*Mat, and all cyclists killed by motorists in Prague. Krištof Kintera’s recent major exhibitions include those at the Prague City Gallery, Municipal Library in Prague (2012), Museum Tinguely, Basil (2014) and Kunsthalle, Rotterdam (2015).