VÍT SOUKUP - EVERYTHING THAT REMAINS | exhibition

For more than five years since his sudden death, Vít Soukup’s universal body of work has been waiting for a retrospective. In this time, much of his art has been stolen, lost, or destroyed. In the end, it is another textbook chapter in the cultural history of a small country that has tried to forget that, for a brief moment, it was home to a genius who exceeded it through his self-destructive irony and fabulations. Soukup’s humorous paintings, culminating in absurd abstraction, have few equals in Czech art – primarily because, despite their bizarre nature, they are almost too serious. They are not a joke, but a threat, hidden in painting. Behind these ridiculous-looking scenes, and because they are so deceptive, we sense the existence of a secret passageway to the laboratory. But to penetrate beyond them requires time and the courage not to let oneself be caught.

We did not spend much time planning this exhibition. We began after the disappointment of official promises and the failure of institutional attempts. We hope that this exhibition will be the first step towards a true retrospective, once everything has been found, restored, and returned. Right now, we have only what remains, but even this is enough to mount an exhibition that can act as a call to rediscover all of Soukup’s alchemist art, in which he dissolved himself.