Center for Contemporary Arts Prague
www.fcca.cz 2006–2024
Jiří Příhoda belongs to the generation of artists who came onto the Czech art scene during the first years after the ground-breaking (watershed) year of 1989. He creates spatial installations and architectural interventions. He is the creator of video projections, in which he works with known Hollywood films during the post-production phase. He belongs among those figures with a broad cultural view and the ability to speak to an international audience.
Between 1992-1997 Jiří Příhoda created several momentous space installations that gradually lost their character as statuary objects (23 October 1993, 1993-1994) and became emotionally-impressive environments inspired by film and the ability to mould human perception (Shot/Shutter 02 – Záběr/klapka 02, Flood – Potopa, 1995-96, Light at the End of the Tunnel – Světlo na konci tunelu, 1996-97).
Locally-specific installations represent a chapter all their own among Příhoda’s creations. In these he reacted to given architectural space and makes use of their various features. In the installation, 3274,8 metres cubed, he pitted both the exterior and interior of the Libeň Synagogue against each other. Together with Brian Eno he created the sound-space installation, Music for Prague, in the Prague National Theatre’s New Hall (Nová síň). This piece offered viewers an enticing, if not exactly attainable, space in the midst of the exhibition room. In that same year he remodelled the Václav Špála Gallery based on a previously-chosen reduction of its floor plan. In this way he created a unique piece of conceptual architecture in the Czech Republic (in Bohemia). In 1994 Jiří Příhoda began to work with video-imagery. He works exclusively with foreign film material that he manipulates in various ways and shows in specific, self-prepared spatial situations (This is the End – To je konec / Intercity III – Meziměsto III, 1996). He showed a second-long vertical band of film images - mainly one where nothing was happening – from George Lucas‘ Star Wars. This is because it was the maximum segment that he could work with freely per the terms of copyright laws (1997-1998). He displayed Herzog’s film, Nosferatus, on two backwards mirrored screens next to one another. He did this to keep in form with the „vampire“ logic that on a film projection shown as a reflection a vampire cannot appear there, and so it was digitally-edited out of the film.
Jiří Příhoda works with graphic design and is the creator of both innovative group installations and historic exhibits (At Present Unending – Aktuální nekonečno, City of Prague Municipal Gallery – GHMP, 2000). Since 2005 he has been running a sculpture workshop at Prague’s Academy of Creative Arts (AVU).