Fake news
Daniel Pitín, Miroslav Polách, Adam Štech
The Erika Deak Gallery is delighted to present Fake News, an exhibition that brings together three Czech painters: Daniel Pitín, Miroslav Polách and Adam Štech. Curated by Jane Neal, the title of the show is one of the most quoted terms in common parlance in relation to popular news.
Each of the artists in this exhibition engages with the notion of the real in society versus the fictions that we might at times live out in our daily lives - a kind of staged front or position we assume to conform to societal expectations and conventions. The artists also address the tension inherent in painting between attempting to represent reality and creating a new version of events - either in figuratively realistic terms such as in the work of Polách; the presentation of a psychological reality in the exaggerated, even caricatured subjects of Štech; or the filmic and theatrical 'stages' depicted by Pitín. Painting itself - the most plastic of art forms, is arguably a conjuring trick - a means of constructing an adaptation of the truth in terms of representational figuration and the application of mathematical devices such as perspective and geometry to deceive the viewer's eye into thinking that a two dimensional surface can in fact operate as a three dimensional image.
Fake News sets out to present the arresting works of these three artists. It also attempts to show how painting - one of the oldest and mostly directly expressive art forms - can engage with this most modern of concepts. The problematic issue of 'Fake News' is not only a challenge for our age, the ramifications could undermine and threaten the longevity of liberal society as we know it.
Curated by Jane Neal
On View: 2018. 05. 10 - 06. 16.