Lent Intervention
The Academic Church of the Holy Saviour by the Charles Bridge
Ash Wednesday – Easter 2015
Vernissage: 18 February 2015 at 20:30
This year’s Lent Intervention by Michal Škoda, which is held in the Academic Church of the Holy Saviour, links the exterior and the interior of the church, while emphasizing both the imaginary and the real threshold between the profane and the sacral spaces. The “closing“ of the entrance to the church paradoxically opens a new space of reflection and a change of perspectives. What is important is not the actual work, but the image that every single visitor carry away with them.
Škoda’s “simplicity, austerity and commonness“, as the artist likes to define his own work, exceeds the usual artistic minimalism. Besides, it is not a mere result of thinking about a “society that is suffocating under deposits of uselessness“. Škoda’s intervention opens in front of us especially a possibility to clarify the most fundamental relationships and constants in this complicated world.
Norbert Schmidt
Michal Škoda (*1962) completed his studies at the Secondary School of Ceramic Art and Design at Bechyně, and since the 1990s he has been preoccupied with visual arts. At the beginning, he went through diverse periods and was employed in various jobs. A turning point in his life came in the year 1994, when he started to present his own free works, at solo and group exhibitions, both in this country and abroad. In his works, which include objects, painting, author books, and recently especially drawing, Michal Škoda deals with the questions of space, looking for its sense and the place that man takes up in it. In 1997 he assumed the position of the head of the House of Art in České Budějovice, which has gradually transformed into an important and respected Central European gallery of contemporary art and architecture.
Realisation: Martin Janda
Contact for the media:
Norbert Schmidt, tel.: 777 00 50 13
Visits to the Intervention exhibition outside the regular church programme can be arranged with the pastoral assistant Jana Pláteníková: info@farnostsalvator.cz, 222 221 339, 724 367 681