Jiří Georg Dokoupil
Untitled (136 Pineapple Slices)
Artist
Jiří Georg Dokoupil
(1954, Krnov), Czech
Original Title
Untitled (136 Pineapple Slices)
Date1991-1993
Mediumpineapple juice and smoke on cotton
Dimensions95,5 × 197 cm
Classificationspaintings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionJiří Georg Dokoupil’s artistic practice is defined by postmodernist tendencies, manifest in the volatility and experimental unorthodoxy of his work. In 1979, he cofounded the Mülheimer Freiheit art group, which was part of the broader so-called Neue Wilde movement. Until 1984, this community of young artists worked together in their Cologne-based shared studio; despite not adhering to a collective artistic doctrine, their intentionally antiaesthetic canvases countered the reductive, austere nature of minimalism and conceptual art. Dokoupil’s paintings from this time are raw and expressive, opposing traditional painterly aesthetics and often incorporating assemblage art techniques. Dokoupil also experimented with a denial of authorship by collaborating with his colleague Walter Dahn. Dokoupil’s later work is underpinned by a perpetual experimental search for new forms, resulting in an intentional absence of personalized style and content due to changing painting styles and formal approaches. The constant rotation of expressional and formal devices, as well as content, stems from his desire to free his practice from the pressures of traditions and judgments in order to embrace a pluralistic perspective aligned with postmodernist skepticism toward universalist ideologies. While Dokoupil does not shy away from fusing art and science in his multifaceted experimental approach, many of retain a significant handcrafted dimension. He also often draws inspiration from the approaches of different authors, which he develops through his own perspective. One of his most significant artistic contributions are the so-called candle paintings, first produced in the late 1980s, which he painted using soot. In the 1990s, Dokoupil began creating paintings using soap bubbles, combining colorful pigments with lye soap, to adorn his canvases with an appearance of aetheric, organic soap bubbles. Alongside more orthodox methods such as oil and wax, other techniques he has used to create works include tire marks, lashing a whip, imprinting vegetables on a canvas, washing paintings in a washing machine, and composing printed images from miniature sequences of film frames.
This work, made using pineapple prints, was created in the early 1990s by combining fruit juice and smoke. It can be interpreted as an ironic reaction to pop art, the world of advertising, and the related question of reproduction through printing which Dokoupil subverted using his handcrafted smoke-based technique and printing pieces of pineapple onto the surface of the canvas. Motifs of exotic fruits stem from his hedonistic enchantment with the beauties and pleasures of Tenerife. During the same time, he was creating these canvases, he also created bronze sculptures of fruit in which he combined different types of fruit into playful compositions, intentionally avoiding traditional sculptural conventions and haughty material approaches.
Jiří Georg Dokoupil (*1954, Krnov) is an internationally acclaimed artist of Czech origins. Following the Soviet invasion in 1968, his family emigrated to Germany. From 1976 to 1978 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cologne (Kölner Fachhochschule für Kunst und Design), spending parts of his studies in Frankfurt and at Cooper University in New York City under professor Hans Haacke. He received international recognition in the 1980s, exhibiting, for instance, at Documenta 7 (1982), the Venice Biennale (1982, 1983), and the Guggenheim Museum (1988). He also had solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Diechhtorhallen Hamburg, the Palacio de Velázquez exhibition hall of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, and the Mumok in Vienna. His solo exhibitions in the Czech Republic took place in 1996 at Galerie Rudolfinum and in 2010 at the Prague Castle Riding School. He lives between Berlin, Prague, Madrid, Tenerife, and Rio de Janeiro. In the past, he was also a visiting lecturer at academies in Amsterdam, Madrid, and Düsseldorf.
This work, made using pineapple prints, was created in the early 1990s by combining fruit juice and smoke. It can be interpreted as an ironic reaction to pop art, the world of advertising, and the related question of reproduction through printing which Dokoupil subverted using his handcrafted smoke-based technique and printing pieces of pineapple onto the surface of the canvas. Motifs of exotic fruits stem from his hedonistic enchantment with the beauties and pleasures of Tenerife. During the same time, he was creating these canvases, he also created bronze sculptures of fruit in which he combined different types of fruit into playful compositions, intentionally avoiding traditional sculptural conventions and haughty material approaches.
Jiří Georg Dokoupil (*1954, Krnov) is an internationally acclaimed artist of Czech origins. Following the Soviet invasion in 1968, his family emigrated to Germany. From 1976 to 1978 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cologne (Kölner Fachhochschule für Kunst und Design), spending parts of his studies in Frankfurt and at Cooper University in New York City under professor Hans Haacke. He received international recognition in the 1980s, exhibiting, for instance, at Documenta 7 (1982), the Venice Biennale (1982, 1983), and the Guggenheim Museum (1988). He also had solo exhibitions at institutions such as the Diechhtorhallen Hamburg, the Palacio de Velázquez exhibition hall of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, and the Mumok in Vienna. His solo exhibitions in the Czech Republic took place in 1996 at Galerie Rudolfinum and in 2010 at the Prague Castle Riding School. He lives between Berlin, Prague, Madrid, Tenerife, and Rio de Janeiro. In the past, he was also a visiting lecturer at academies in Amsterdam, Madrid, and Düsseldorf.
