David Böhm - Fathers

This drawing/collage is a grotesque sequence of reflections on the topics of paternity and (artistic) work. Schematic drawings from the old National Geographic magazines look like a somewhat bizarre "instructions for use" of a kind of doll, rather than reflect the real interaction of the father and son. My father is also a worker, an artist, a performer. The long bars that the central hero manipulates resembles the performative drawing of Franta and Böhm, when the work is formed under similar conditions and using different tools. As we know, manipulation of a child or art is never as easy as the instructions and smart books say. It is one big theater with joy, worries and flesh, which is mainly a lot of work.

Jiří Franta (*1978) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in the Antonín Střížek and Vladimír Skrepl studios between 2001 and 2007. Since 2001 he has been a member of the Rafani Art Group, he has been an assistant in the studio of Painting II at Favu Brno and together with Jiří Skála founded and led the Gallery ETC in Prague.

David Böhm (*1982) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in the studios of Vladimír Kokolia and Vladimír Skrepl in 2003 - 2009. In 2021 he completed a doctoral program here. Since 2022, the studio of graphics also leads to Prague Academy of Sciences. He completed a semestral internship at Faculdade de Belas Artes Universidade da Universidade to Porto in Portugal. He has been combining work in the artistic pair of Jiří Franta and David Böhm since their studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. They presented their work at a number of exhibitions, in publications and as part of the site-specific projects in the Czech Republic and abroad, in 2009, 2010 and 2021 the finalists of the Jindřich Chalupecký Awards were finalists.

Karina Kottová, curator