Exhibition opening Miloslav Chytil, Jan Lechner: Silentium Gilotina

A moment of tension before the monotonously straight EKG line ripples with the sign of life. The time the guillotine bladefalls. The calm before the frantic recording of seismic waves. The countdown to the explosion. 

The pencil wobbles. The passing paper fills the space with thepassing time like sand in the bottom bulb of an hourglass. A machine, similar to the seismograph that the duo Miloslav Chytil and Jan Lechner designed for the gallery space, keeps a watchful eye on our activity. By creating a record ofeverything that flashes by in its surroundings, it points out thevisible human traces on the surface of the planet. At the sametime, the work is a subtle commentary on the practice ofcontemporary design, the domain of both artists, which has only slowly succeeded in replacing the aestheticization ofobjects with other, more pressing tasks. The project at Galerie Nika is one of a series of realizations in which Chytil and Lechner explore the overlaps of design and draw attention to its social responsibility through its inherent intertwining withhuman life.

Curators: Emma Štifterová, Matej Majda

Graphic design: Michal Tůma