Curator: Jiří Ptáček
“The B.I.G. exhibition showcases two different yet related sets of artefacts. The parallels arising between them are aspects of “power”, “ideal” and “control” embodied in an abstract form. The bent shapes of the icon-objects in the Pain & Gain cycle give the impression that they are the result of intense bodily (or perhaps machine?) pressure. In reality, however, they were not created through the application of a (de)formative force, but again through a controlled process of casting into a pre-prepared matrix. It could be said of them that they are not destroyed, but constructed… which, however, does not change the fact that it is hard to disassociate the aspect of “violence” from them.
The human mind associates perceived phenomena with already stored knowledge on the basis of recognised features. This mostly helpful yet flawed and assumption-based mechanism allows for later corrections, even though it is a difficult and only partially successful process. Petr Dub seems to be thematising the layering of information over itself, the emergence of a mixture of incompatible, contradictory or opposing “opinions”. In my opinion, his point is not to accentuate the fallacy of human opinion or a trivially simulated reality, but the fact of the existence of two parallel states…” (Read more by the exhibition curator Jiří Ptáček here…)