Zdeněk Pešánek's interwar artistic practice, centered on the idea of color music, served as a loose inspiration for the audiovisual installation The Quality of Being Inconsistent. The project explores electricity through minimalist means, represented by the fourth state of matter—plasma. While the glass tube is composed of components similar to those Pešánek used in his work, it significantly pushes the boundaries of electricity’s artistic application. By employing contemporary techniques in musical composition and shifting emphasis from the object's mass and shape to the very nature of the light discharge, artist Jakub Pešek expands the possibilities within which Pešánek's inventive work operated nearly a century ago.
The Grief of Misfit Cathedrals
Type:
AV installation, experimental film, art exhibition, 2D/3D animation, sound design, AV tech integration
The Grief of Misfit Cathedrals is an audiovisual artwork exploring the phenomenon of abandoned industrial objects, which, having lost their original function, become solitary presences in urban space. This experimental project is based on precise 3D scans of places that exist in separation from the regular rhythms of urban life. Their raw yet fragile beauty thus becomes preserved despite the surrounding entropy. The melancholic atmosphere evoked by the film’s immersive format and augmented by its spatialized multi-channel sound design draws inspiration from the Japanese concept of “mono no aware”, which centres on coming to terms with transience and finding beauty in death and impermanence. A similar emotional charge permeates the art of European romanticism, with scenes often set against a backdrop of classical and medieval ruins. This artwork was commissioned by the Kunsthalle Praha and presented in 2023 as a large-scale installation in its Gallery 3. Installation was included in the Signal Festival 2023 gallery zone as well.