PATRIK ILLO: ARTERIES

Where?

• Museum of Glass and Jewelery in Jablonec nad Nisou

  • U Muzea 398/4, 466 01 Jablonec nad Nisou, ČR

When?

• Opening: 16.11.2023, 5 p. m.

  • incl. a friendly meeting and a guided tour with the author

• Duration: 17. 11. 2023 - 21. 4. 2024

• More info

 

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About the exhibition

From November 17, the museum's glass exhibition space will be filled with works by top Slovak designer Patrik Illo. We named ARTERIE a selection from his rich work. "Patrik Illo specializes in product design for leading European manufacturers of utility glass, he also works on experimental design," explained Petr Nový, chief curator of the our museum. On Thursday, November 16, from 5 p.m., the museum and the author invite you to a friendly Meet & Greet, which will offer a guided tour of the exhibition.

Read also the text of the curator

Photogallery

Curator:

• PhDr. Petr Nový; Chief curator of the Museum of Glass and Jewelery in Jablonec nad Nisou, Czech Republic

Patrik Illo – Arteries

While Illo’s work is broad in form, ranging from commercial design to art design to free art, three thematic threads permeate all areas of his artistic activity – fluidity, interaction and kinetics. Collectively, they form the creative and contextual metaspace in which he moves as an artist. Illo’s work is motivated by the desire to unravel the “technology of creation”; to come to grips with how this process works.

Irrespective of the formal outcome of creative expression, Illo has long been fascinated by the “fluid nature” of objects and phenomena. It is far from being merely about glass as a material with many faces, with fluidity as a synonym for the liquid nature of the substance, but rather the mutability of emotions, states of mind, the relativity of time and the inimitable magic of moments.

An ambivalent “fluidity” also informs Illo’s works, which draw inspiration from human sexuality and its symbols, where he delights in visually relativizing notions of “softness” and “hardness”, or “fullness” and “emptiness”.  In contemporary interpretations, this might seem to be an activist gendered theme. Illo, however, employs gender principles only as a platform, a set of ritualized signs through which he can comment on, but not judge, the narratives we have associated with this area of human existence, including the principles of “masculinity”, “femininity”, and their functionalities. 

“Interaction”, both in itself and the desire for it, is ubiquitous in Illo’s work. His art often challenges us to engage in dialogue, since interpretation is not straightforward. He provokes, confuses, goes against the grain, substituting questions for answers, not to mock the viewer, but to make them laugh (or think) along with him. He renders the viewer a companion, a conspirator to whom it makes sense to confide.

Kinetics, momentum and instability incorporate to some degree the two previous themes. Illo, designer and artist, relishes taking the viewer out of their comfort zone and offering them a “world in motion”. In terms of programming, he deals with the moment of surprise. He uses apparent certainty (or the perception of it) to play a game whose charm and dramatic effect lies in the tension between expectation and reality, in surprising perspective. It is as though Archimedes had indeed found a fixed point and managed to move the Earth. Or at least the perspective. These works and objects may also be perceived as an allegory of this hectic age, when instead of walking we choose to run, and instead of images we perceive the world as mere flickers before our eyes. The world changes faster than we do. In principle, we are still just hunters and gatherers who have switched from the motivation to survive to the imperative to accumulate (which is even stronger than existence itself). However, Illo is far from the type of socially engaged artist who half-heartedly holds up the mirror to and beats the drum about the negative phenomena of our age and human existence. He is too subtle and honest with himself and others for that.

 

Petr Nový

 

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