Overclouded

Matěj Hrbek (*1988) is the author of deliberate ambivalence, which makes it completely beyond the commonly seen on the artistic scene. Grotesque work? It belongs to it as well as precise craftsmanship, which has something meditative, even spiritual. In a way, Matěj's work is a child's dream exaggerated to the extreme, so the whole altars of plastic and crayons are created. However, they are altars without people, or dehumanized worlds with mythology of prehistoric paintings and patterns, comic book stories, or worlds with tension and dynamics of artistic directions of the past centuries.

Matěj Hrbek studied at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts under the leadership of Milan Knížák, later Vladimír Skrepl (2011–17), while he also completed his internship in Rio de Janeiro (2015). In addition to the drawing and the building, he also focuses on graphics and, in addition to fine art, poetry and occasionally curatorism (in 2017–19 he led the stolen gallery). The exhibition is active not only in the Czech Republic, but also abroad, especially in Germany and Spain. In our country, for example, had an independent exhibition in HYB4 Gallery (Gray, 2021) or collective in Bold Gallery (Ma_Scary, 2024). It is a former resident of Pragovka and is in the collections both Klatovy Klenová Gallery and for example the Investment Fund for Arte.

Text: Jan Čejka

More information on the web: Matejhrbek.com, or on Instagram.