Schleicher + Lange

Kristof Kintera: Problems on top of problems

Following the success of his first solo show at the gallery in 2006, we are delighted toannounce a new exhibition by Kristof Kintera.
A prominent artist on the contemporary Czech scene, Kristof Kintera (born in 1973, lives and works in Prague) has also exhibited on the international circuit: at the Kunstmuseum in Bonn, Mikkeli Museum of Art in Finland, Moderna Museet in Sweden and Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin. In France, his work drew particular attention during the inaugural exhibition of the Palais de Tokyo’s new management (5 milliards d’années (5 billion years) by Marc Olivier Wahler) and the FIAC 2006 special project in the Jardin des Tuileries, with the piece entitled Homegrown n° 2, a palm tree made out of empty Fanta cans stacked eight metres high.
Kristof Kintera’s work evokes the doubts that currently grip those societies undergoing rapid economic expansion in the wake of communism or totalitarian regimes. At the same time, his work is universal insofar as it reaches beyond local preoccupations, touching human nature in its very urges through the use of everyday objects that he cleverly warps. The laughter mechanism at this point serves to dig a critical chasm between oneself and the world. By turns humorous, linguistic or moving, the artist’s works conjure up the feelings at the root of the human condition, such as fear, the will to survive and pleasure.
In this new exhibition, Kristof Kintera tackles the particular frustration experienced in deadend situations: the consumer society in which we are trapped, the desire for protection that cuts us off from the world, the politics that interest young people less and less but on which democracy hangs, or the body, at once indecent and sexual.
Bad Innovation in the Name of Protection is a pushchair, created from scratch by the artist as a demonstration of the scale of our desire for protection, our fears and our inability to face up to death; Fatal Egoist is a bicycle whose frame is twisted, as if turned in on itself. At a time when the Vélib’ scheme is taking Paris by storm (Vélib’ is a self service “bike hire” system available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week), in this piece the bicycle is identified with the individualist, spurning public transport, one of the few closed-in places where social classes mix. Red is Coming, whose title is reminiscent of an obselete communist threat, is an invasion of a place by a strange matter, the colour of blood and revolution: at once tomato purée and concentrated rage, the piece is concerned with the emotional impalpable and foreshadows a time when the place will be filled with a matter which, although unidentified, is certainly incompatible with human presence.