Vertical Artwork Selection

(canvas, wood, acrylic, green screen tape)

The exhibition title might feel like a joke, but it has its merit. Despite the fact that it contains some irony, it explains the media identity of Petr Dub’s work. The author has been examining for a long time the (physical) limits of the suspension picture: he is creating a factual and mental tension between the surface and the inner structure, addressing the questions of its sensory and paradigmatic perception. Petr Dub considers the picture in context, which is defined both by the architecture of a specific space in which it is installed, and by the institutional, cultural and social framework. He himself often states that the picture is “the most sincere” in the studio. (Petr Dub represents the type of a “studio” artist whose artistic activity is not exclusively conditioned by exhibition opportunities.) Transports of a picture create another interpretation frame – the critic and the theoretician formulate their interpretations solely in the mode set by gallery operation, constituted on the basis of professional field consensus. The irony in the title of this exhibition is therefore related to Petr’s long-time playing with visual art genres: such as image and object, or surface and spatial artwork, traditional categories, which are usually put into contrast. Repeated transfers between these levels then justify the use of (seemingly) inane title “vertical artwork” without denying its humorous undertone. The author tests the potential of a picture, as he emphasizes, by eliminating the established cliché that there must be something happening in the image field, so that there would be “something to look at”… More from the text Vertical Artwork Selection by Markéta Žáčková at…