Kryštof Kaplan: TENSION

About

Tension between stability and movement, peace and danger, between the organic and inorganic essence of matter, between its qualities such as heaviness and lightness, hardness and softness, flexibility or rigidity, as well as between the established function of objects and its contradiction – these are topics that sculptor Kryštof Kaplan (1987) has been systematically exploring from the time of his studies at Prague’s Academy of Fine Art in the Sculpture II studio with Professor Jindřich Zeithammel, where he subsequently also worked as an assistant.

At the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, Kryštof Kaplan presents three situations that use the tension between appearances and reality as their main communication method. They pull the viewer into a semantic game in which expectations about properties and physical laws or about the scale and function of a specific mass or object are eroded and shaken.

He first applied this principle in his thesis series entitled Disappeareance, which introduces the DOX exhibition. The series contains five sculptures that metaphorically depict the phases one goes through when coming to terms with mortality, as described by psychologist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying. Here the artist works with everyday utilitarian objects such as chairs, old duvets, and bedsheets, which he places into aluminum industrial mechanisms that take into account interaction with the human body – in their own way they work as a sort of trap, and utilize the