Big Golden Eyes

Jakub Polách’s work deals with the media image of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award — in what tone and with what intentions has the Award been reflected on television, in the press, and in online media over the thirty five years of its existence? Was art or scandal more important? And which themes are revisited again and again while others have fallen by the wayside? 

The work consists of a large-format print and a video collage. The drawing of the little man with an inflated brain is based on the so-called “Wojak,” a figure that has become part of countless internet memes shared on social media around the world. In Jakub Polách’s interpretation, Wojak appears a bit like Jindřich Chalupecký, with his iconic glasses and capacious cranium, which is lifting him like a hot air balloon toward soaring ideas, while the screen, displaying a video that maps all the media “snippets”, pulls him downward. Chalupecký sways somewhere between vision and reality, the truth and its manipulation. 

Jakub Polách works with all of these sources and inspirations with his typical dose of lightness, wit, irony, and critical edge. He examines the past, thus also reshaping the present and perhaps even the future.