If your artistic work were a cycling race, would it be a fast sprint, a tough mountain stage, or a never-ending time trial?
Pavla: Since with every small exhibition success I think I’ve reached the finish line—but I’m always wrong—it’s probably more like an endless mountain stage. I paint quality, not quantity.
Jakub: I’m a sprinter thrown into an endurance stage with no finish line. The race profile is distinctly bipolar—drawn-out climbs followed by sudden, steep descents. I’m pretty sure that’s a professional diagnosis. I just haven’t figured out which organizer I should convince to change the route.
You are exhibiting together in the Laichter House. How do your works enter into dialogue with each other, and where does tension arise between them?
Pavla: Jakub and I are exhibiting together for the first time, both presenting finished works, so our dialogue unfolds primarily through strong visual language. My paintings are certainly not as political as Jakub’s videos. They are more on a personal level of experiences. But when I see clips from the movie Pumpkinville, I feel like transforming and repainting moments from the video onto the canvas. Yeah, I like our combo.
Jakub: I actually don’t understand why we’re only exhibiting together now. We have known each other for 15 years. We ride bikes together and can talk quite openly about everything. Tension is the last thing I know in my relationship with Pavla. Rather, it’s about sharing our journey together from Ostrava. I’m really looking forward to our exhibition; it’s this kind of easy, unproblematic excitement.
Both of you work with strong visuality and symbolism in your art. Where does the boundary between narrative and purely visual play begin for you?
Pavla: It’s different with every painting; sometimes the narrative isn’t that strong, so I have to be more visual.
Jakub: Currently, I shoot one film a year. In the preparation phase, I work more with text—the narrative. It gradually takes on a visual form as well. Masks, the set, and costumes—which are designed by my partner Karolína Juříková—have to be prepared. However, I also leave some room for visual play during the filming itself, when individual scenes are adjusted. It’s fun and stressful at the same time because you have a crew of 30 people behind you, and you have to make decisions really quickly. More creative shaping happens during post-production or when installing the exhibition.
Do you perceive your works as autonomous objects, or rather as part of a broader, open exhibition environment?
Jakub: The latter. I am interested in the exhibition as a whole. The audience’s experience and the environment with its hidden dramaturgy are important to me.
Pavla: In this case, definitely more as a mutual play for the viewers.
How important is narrativity to you—is the work more of a depiction, or does it trigger a process of imagination?
Jakub: When a story is created, images are revealed simultaneously. They shape each other immediately and spontaneously. It’s hard to limit and separate them.
Pavla: Currently, I work a lot with photography, which I edit and collage. But before, I used to paint based on my quick sketches. I would peel off paint, layer it, and repaint the image over and over, so in the end, it was a very imaginative process. I really relate to this way of working.
When you think about the viewer, do you tend to guide them, or do you deliberately leave room for disorientation and personal interpretation?
Pavla: I think about the viewer more during solo exhibitions, where I consistently work on a single theme. But honestly, I realize that my paintings aren’t all that easy to read, so there’s plenty of room for personal interpretation.
Jakub: To guide, to confuse, to let wander, but also to help or to set false trails. I like it when each person has a different experience; I don’t try to make everyone see the same thing. At the same time, I have to make sure the viewers have enough motivation to engage in the shared detective-interpretive game.
Painting and installation—the two media you represent—are historically very different. Do you still see a significant boundary between them today?
Pavla: If they are as playful and visual as Jakub’s video installation and my paintings, I don’t see a boundary between them.
Jakub: I thought video art was already retro, but compared to painting, it’s still technological sci-fi. Galleries struggle with how to turn on the TV and ensure the film plays continuously throughout the exhibition. Logistically, it’s a much bigger hassle than working with painting.
How do you incorporate elements of play, irony, or absurdity into your work—and when does seriousness and an existential tone take over?
Pavla: It probably depends on the state I’m in. I really like the element of play and irony. I often hear now: “But your paintings are no longer as playful and funny as they used to be.” Or: “Do you have to keep painting those two lovers over and over again?” And things like that. If I’m relaxed and just paint purely painterly pictures without humor, but also without an existential stance, and only repaint the process of painting, I get bored. I need to alternate between those stances.
Jakub: Ugh, that’s a tough one. That existential anguish is constantly present, but humor helps it to rise up to some form of communication or sharing. Humor is a normative tool; I perceive its political function more than some frivolous lightheartedness. I also notice how it changes strategically and ideologically. Provocation and irony have today been stolen by an extremely conservative world. But that doesn’t mean humor is finished; it must be reinvented for the next stages of the struggle (if I stick to your cycling vocabulary).
What kind of soundtrack do you think should accompany the Gridfall exhibition—if it were turned into a film?
Pavla: I’m not sure, but Vertigo by the French artist Para One was playing in my studio yesterday. Atmospheric music with no crap.
Jakub: The soft bubbling of aquarium fish, paired with the soothing whisper of a home fountain. From time to time, the unbearably loud opening of Blaník—the sixth and final symphonic poem in Smetana’s My Fatherland cycle—would erupt.
And finally: if you had to express in one sentence what a visitor should take away from the Gridfall exhibition, what would it be?
Pavla: Nothing is as it seems.
Jakub: You’ll find out in the Celeryman’s final monologue in the film Pumpkinville.
