Matyáš Chochola
Polar Lights (white)
Artist
Matyáš Chochola
(1986, Hradec Králové), Czech
Original Title
Polar Lights (white)
Date2015–2021
Mediumpolystyrene, plaster, wood, metal, neon
Dimensions87 × 82 × 30 cm
Classificationssculpture
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionMatyáš Chochola is a multifaceted artist whose work freely combines magical and technological elements, drawing attention to contemporary society’s loss of spiritual values. His eclectic work focuses on performative expression and spatial installations without adhering to a predetermined aesthetic; to the contrary, Chochola frequently draws on various historical styles, pursuing access to “altered states of consciousness”. Apart from gallery spaces, Chochola’s work is often situated in urban space. His artworks are defined by formal unorthodoxy and an ability to combine disparate elements, as well as by experimentation with materials and scales. Chochola combines post-internet trash aesthetics with different painting techniques, the wild aesthetics of the 1990s, and objects produced through experimentation with glasswork, as well as with found objects and fragments of technological artifacts which are rapidly becoming outdated. In his almost shamanic creative approach, he manages to smoothly blend contemporary symbols with the symbolisms of ancient cultures, which he sees as parallel worlds capable of mirroring contemporary problems. By evoking these historical cultures centred around spirituality and myth, Chochola’s work spotlights what the present-day world may be lacking or unsuccessfully searching for.
Polar Lights (2015–2021) is an informalist relief, the polystyrene foundation of which was created in Kvilda for a joint exhibition with Lumír Hladík at the Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb. Later, Chochola added other features, specifically neon lights and a pink rod, thus exploring the question of the artwork’s completedness and its performative process of creation, which allows the artist to repeatedly intervene in it. The result of this creative process is a haptic structural relief made through an intuitive process of combining heterogenous elements, many of which give a new life to discarded and broken objects. Chochola thus spotlights the nature of the contemporary post-internet world, in which manifold elements and meanings overlap in constant flux, without inquiry beyond their surface-level appearance, into their deeper meaning.
Matyáš Chochola (born 1986, Hradec Králová) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, in Vladimír Skrepl’s painting studio, graduating in 2014. During his studies, he spent time in the studios of visiting professors (Zbigniew Libera, Florian Pumhösl, the art group Gelitin). He also spent a semester in Rony Plesl’s glass studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 2012, and subsequently, in 2013, in Thomas Zipp’s painting studio at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Chochola is a laureate of the Václav Chad Award (2012), awarded as part of the Zlín Youth Salon, and the Jindřích Chalupecký Award (2016). In 2017, he attended the artist residency Residency Unlimited in New York City. He has exhibited at institutions such as the Gallery of Fine Art in Cheb (Telepresence of a Gasoline Warlock of the Digital Era and his Green-Brown Gown-Clad Marten in the Temple of Heavens During Late New Moon, 2015, with Lumír Hladík) the Grimmuseum in Berlin (Astral Dust Astral, 2015), the Last Tango Gallery in Zürich (Bing Bang Style, 2017, with Kristine Roepstroff), the PLATO gallery in Ostrava (Garden of the Future, 2018), the Spazio Cabinet in Milan (The Most Successful Couple of the Epoch, with Christian Jakowski), the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové (History of the World, 2020), and the Gossamer Fog gallery in London (The Alchemist, 2021). In 2016, Chochola represented Czechia at Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art in Zürich.
Polar Lights (2015–2021) is an informalist relief, the polystyrene foundation of which was created in Kvilda for a joint exhibition with Lumír Hladík at the Gallery of Fine Arts in Cheb. Later, Chochola added other features, specifically neon lights and a pink rod, thus exploring the question of the artwork’s completedness and its performative process of creation, which allows the artist to repeatedly intervene in it. The result of this creative process is a haptic structural relief made through an intuitive process of combining heterogenous elements, many of which give a new life to discarded and broken objects. Chochola thus spotlights the nature of the contemporary post-internet world, in which manifold elements and meanings overlap in constant flux, without inquiry beyond their surface-level appearance, into their deeper meaning.
Matyáš Chochola (born 1986, Hradec Králová) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, in Vladimír Skrepl’s painting studio, graduating in 2014. During his studies, he spent time in the studios of visiting professors (Zbigniew Libera, Florian Pumhösl, the art group Gelitin). He also spent a semester in Rony Plesl’s glass studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 2012, and subsequently, in 2013, in Thomas Zipp’s painting studio at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. Chochola is a laureate of the Václav Chad Award (2012), awarded as part of the Zlín Youth Salon, and the Jindřích Chalupecký Award (2016). In 2017, he attended the artist residency Residency Unlimited in New York City. He has exhibited at institutions such as the Gallery of Fine Art in Cheb (Telepresence of a Gasoline Warlock of the Digital Era and his Green-Brown Gown-Clad Marten in the Temple of Heavens During Late New Moon, 2015, with Lumír Hladík) the Grimmuseum in Berlin (Astral Dust Astral, 2015), the Last Tango Gallery in Zürich (Bing Bang Style, 2017, with Kristine Roepstroff), the PLATO gallery in Ostrava (Garden of the Future, 2018), the Spazio Cabinet in Milan (The Most Successful Couple of the Epoch, with Christian Jakowski), the Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové (History of the World, 2020), and the Gossamer Fog gallery in London (The Alchemist, 2021). In 2016, Chochola represented Czechia at Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art in Zürich.
