Jiří Kovanda

Jiří Kovanda has left an indelible mark on art history with his unique body of work, and he continues to influence the rising generation through his artistic, pedagogical, and curatorial activities. He is most frequently associated with the performances and actions he has been pursuing since the 1970s, though he also creates spatial installations and, occasionally, two-dimensional paintings or collages. Through simple gestures and minimal means, he alters and shifts the surrounding reality. His work primarily touches upon relationships—whether interpersonal, social, or those between everyday objects and places, which Kovanda moves from their utility toward slightly humorous situations. Although Kovanda’s work was never a priori political, in the 1970s, simply turning 180 degrees on an escalator full of people or spreading one's arms out among passersby could be interpreted as an anti-establishment gesture. At the core of Kovanda’s work, however, has always been an everyday poetics—a kiss between lovers on Střelecký Island with the impression of their feet in plaster, a kiss between random passersby through the glass of the famous Tate Modern, sprinkling sugar and salt into the corners of the 1st of May Bridge, or perhaps sticking pins into a bread roll.

Jiří Kovanda (*1953) is a self-taught artist who lives and works in Prague. He graduated in 1973 from a five-year masonry apprenticeship program at a vocational school in Prague-Malešice, and from 1971 he worked as a surveyor for Military Constructions on the building of the Prague Metro. He had his first exhibition in 1976 at the Mospan student gallery in Warsaw, and a year later he began working in the National Gallery’s depository at the Municipal Library in Prague. From 1995, he served as an assistant professor in Vladimír Skrepl's Painting Studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, and he currently leads the Object-Space-Action studio at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem. He is represented by the SVIT gallery. He exhibits both in the Czech Republic and, predominantly, abroad in leading international art museums and galleries.