Fragment 0

Galerie mladých 11 12 — 25 01
opening — 10 12 2019 17:30

The initial and final motif of Michal Žilinský ́s exhibition is a zero milestone. This takes place moment after an apocalypse, at the Earth without people, at the place, where different physical rules apply. This is the author ́s fourth CGI animation, centred around a fictitious virtual environment. The so-called Zone is inspired by both abandoned and magical place of Andrei Tarkovski and masters of classic sci-fi – Strugatski brothers. In Fragment 0, the author goes beyond: teases the viewer, shakes their confidence, mystifies. He chooses one object from the ambivalent Zone and hides its identity under the destruction signs of time and also visual play – under trompe l'oeil. 

At the same time, he follows his characteristic style as it was his brand: epic hyperrealism, references to chiaroscuro and almost magical symbolics could be seen in most of his previous works. Into his latest project, the author also inweaves commercial strategies known from pop culture, more pronounced than in previous works. This is highlighted mainly by camera work, music (the author is Tomáš Moravanský, performer and musician) or by formal references to the genre of videogame introduction. The inanimate object of his interest becomes hero- Frankenstein, commodified by same lascivious visual references like he ever lived. The ruin is depicted as a breakdown of matrix – clearly defined system – undermining the untenability of modern strict pragmatism. 

The ruin and its fragments were however created thanks to conflict of human relations, thanks to the catastrophe caused by humans. The author then, by his installation refers not only to the extinction of the world and its original purpose but also to its legitimate contradictions. If using a 3D hyperrealistic moving image can blur borders of reality and fiction, then integration of hyperrealistic drawing, which is on the contrary most tradeable artefact of the exhibition, forces us to the absolute relativization. What if then, by words of most popular 90 ́s ufologist Erich von Däniken, doomsday had already happened?