Krištof Kintera
Show Me How to Be
2023
Drawing
Mixed media
103 x 73 cm
Acquired in 2024
On view in The M Lounge
Czech artist Krištof Kintera (b. 1973, Prague) is internationally acclaimed for his sculptural, often kinetic works imbued with a characteristic energy and imaginative wit. Crafted with a dark sense of humour, Kintera’s artistic practice addresses current affairs. Striking a balance between feigned triviality and fatality, his works comprise a lively and philosophical critique of hyper-capitalist systems, especially with respect to ecological concerns.
Krištof Kintera describes a significant part of his work that he has been continuously working on for almost two decades as “drawings”. These are in fact almost three-dimensional works of uniform format that most people would consider to be more like collages or assemblages. For Krištof Kintera, however, they are definitely drawings. This is primarily because of how he creates them - spontaneously, quickly, with ease. He creates these straightforward compositions with limited resources - the found and “consumed” objects and materials of our everyday existence. Text often plays an important role in them. Simple yet visually striking arrangements, short punchy texts, playfulness, irony, hyperbole.
The way Krištof Kintera composes the individual objects and texts into their final form is reminiscent of the process of drawing itself. They are quick sketches, visual records of thoughts, of what the artist unconsciously stores somewhere in the back compartments of his memory during the day - a fragment of a sentence or thought, an emotion, the colouring of a word, song lyrics, a trite phrase, a piece of an advertising slogan - so that at the first possible opportunity, when he is back in his studio, he can retrieve them and quickly, before he forgets them, get them on paper, or in this case, on a board. Thus, a kind of diary is created - a personal confession of the artist, where he records on individual pages what interests, pleases, frustrates, and frightens him. At the same time, he touches on our own innermost feelings, joys, desires, pains, and fears.
– Excerpt from the text by Michaela Šilpochová for Krištof Kintera's exhibition How Can I Help You?, DOX, Prague, 2023.
