Kryštof Strejc
Shadow Illusion
Artist
Kryštof Strejc
(1994, Domažlice), Czech
Original Title
Shadow Illusion
Date2017
Mediumcrayon on paper
Dimensions300 × 150 cm
Classificationsdrawings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionKryštof Strejc is a member of the post-internet generation of artists. He draws inspiration from the complicated contemporary social reality of late capitalism as it grapples with various social, ecological, political, and cultural questions. His works thus represent a personal reflection on the outside world, but also on artistic practice and his own artistic identity. His earlier assemblage works, incorporating fragments of clothing, pushed the formal boundaries of the hanging painting. In his more recent work, Strejc returns to narrational, figurative painting based on layered metaphors and a grotesque irony inscribed in numerous playful details and pop cultural references. Characteristic of these often-sizeable canvases is a contrast of expressive colors with delicate, planar draftsmanship and a return to painterly intuition and spontaneity.
The inspiration for this sizeable pastel drawing titled Shadow Illusion (2017) was Strejc’s trip to Japan as well as the American mystically themed low-budget series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and its protagonist, the Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Cain, who rights every wrong and stops every villain in New York City’s Chinatown. The painted colorful symbols of a mask and hands thematize the question of a hidden identity which allows the masked person to assume different roles and temporarily gain abilities which allow them to solve problems that can normally only be passively observed without the chance to influence them.
Kryštof Strejc (*1994, Domažlice) studied new media art under Vladimír Merta in the Faculty of Design and Art at the University of Western Bohemia in Pilsen. He then went on to study painting in Jiří Černický’s studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague between 2016 and 2019. In 2018 and 2019, he was named among the finalists of the Critics’ Prize for Young Painting. Strejc’s work is regularly displayed at exhibitions focused on the upcoming generation of Czech artists.
The inspiration for this sizeable pastel drawing titled Shadow Illusion (2017) was Strejc’s trip to Japan as well as the American mystically themed low-budget series Kung Fu: The Legend Continues and its protagonist, the Shaolin monk Kwai Chang Cain, who rights every wrong and stops every villain in New York City’s Chinatown. The painted colorful symbols of a mask and hands thematize the question of a hidden identity which allows the masked person to assume different roles and temporarily gain abilities which allow them to solve problems that can normally only be passively observed without the chance to influence them.
Kryštof Strejc (*1994, Domažlice) studied new media art under Vladimír Merta in the Faculty of Design and Art at the University of Western Bohemia in Pilsen. He then went on to study painting in Jiří Černický’s studio at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague between 2016 and 2019. In 2018 and 2019, he was named among the finalists of the Critics’ Prize for Young Painting. Strejc’s work is regularly displayed at exhibitions focused on the upcoming generation of Czech artists.
