Are we inside or outside right now? It´s not perfectly clear. In architecture, distorting of what we see with paint or light effects is a type of visual magic or optical play. Facades are typically adorned with various optical illusions, displaying 3D objects in 2D form and creating new hybrid shapes. In their current exhibition project, Mantichora (Manticore), the authors Martin Herold (*1986) and Pavel Příkaský (*1985) frequently invert these illusory elements. The facade, which we expect to be outside, is situated inside. The painting, which we expect to be inside the frame, is interwoven directly into the walls and used for “holding” the paintings-paintings, which are then, according to the inverting motif, tautologically “framed” by the architectural illusion. Apart from the references to the hybrid mechanism of trompe l'oeil (also known as technique of illusive painting), the authors use here motif of a mythological creature with the combined features of different animals. With the head of a human, body of a lion and a tail of venomous spines or wings of a bat, Manticores produce sounds resembling soft music of a flute. Pavel Příkaský captures them in more variations on a wall painting, a painting or a space installation as simplified zoomorphic motifs typically known from the reliefs, architectural details or sculptures.
The exhibition project Come Over When You're Sober is the second part of the series Becoming a Girl, which takes as its theme the character of a (young) girl as we can meet her in works by Tiqqun (1999), Deleuze and Guattari (1980), or Witold Gombrowitze (1937). The aim of the cycle is to present the character of a young girl as a conscious and unintended guide in confrontation with the difficulties of today's world, against the background of the works of the young generation of Czech artists.
