Martin Fišr. A naive and hobbyist artist. A curator who was a curator at a time when people preparing exhibitions were not yet even called curators. An expert in modern and contemporary art. An unassuming worker and co-creator of the art business. A crushing critic. A custodian of a depository who would most like to paint over a Rembrandt with a black square. A college teacher and perpetual student. A fatal hesitant, for whom the (in)possibility of decision has become a theme. A visual glutton and connoisseur of bizarre aesthetics. In his artistic work, he often uses pictorial material that we consider worthless junk.
He works with its unmistakable visuality, which he understands as a specific reflection of the times. He is interested in how it corresponds to the image we form of a certain time period. Whether we have experienced it first-hand or only vicariously. He experiences a special kind of harmony with old reproductions on the staircases of apartment buildings, whether it is a view of the Alps in the morning sun or Špála in the most brilliant colors. He collects postcards from before his childhood times. He likes to surround himself with them. Literally. He takes a long time to collect. He sorts.
For his collages, he sensitively chooses pairs of postcards, only one of which can tell the story of the other. With his own irony, he tells micro-stories between a boy’s dream, a mediated experience and a nightmare from a school field trip. He creates joyful domestic installations. An admirer of German advertising calendars and magazines from the heyday of the 1990s. He overlays paint over reproductions with a removed background. As much as possible. Then he makes a surgically precise cut that reveals little because only little is worth it.
