Ivan Pinkava (1961)
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Ivan Pinkava is one of the most prominent personalities in contemporary Czech and world photography. His work is characterised by technical precision, formal reduction, and simple composition which enables sophisticated expression. The artist’s well-thought-out studio compositions often contain the ideas of the relentlessness of the passage of time, uncertainty, and transience, arousing a feeling of concern in the beholder. The photographs, for which Pinkava chooses a hermetic space, draw on the content of archetypal human stories. Throughout his work, he works with traditional iconography, and vanitas and memento mori themes, whose traditional meanings he changes, updates, or empties, and thus creates a very unique visual language that reflects his specific way of thinking. Pinkava’s photographs often contain questions about the meaning of existence – the course of human life, its vulnerability, fragility, and the subsequent confrontation with death. Fascinated by the process of extinction, however, he does not perceive finiteness negatively, but rather as a beginning of something new, unknown, that transcends the limits of our knowledge. His works are represented in many Czech and international private collections and galleries (eg. Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Gallery Prague; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts of Houston). His name is included in the German encyclopaedia of world photographers entitled Das Lexikon der Fotografen 1900 bis Heute.
Selected exhibitions:
Ivan Pinkava - Backtracking, House of Art, České Budějovice, CZE, 2020
Ivan Pinkava, Categories of Fiction, See+ Gallery, Beijing, CHN, 2015
Ivan Pinkava, Trônes délaissés, Stimultania Gallery, Strassbourg, FRA, 2015
Ivan Pinkava, Remains, AU Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington DC, USA, 2012
Ivan Pinkava: Heroes, Rudolfinum Gallery, Prague, CZE, 2004
Ivan Pinkava is one of the most prominent personalities in contemporary Czech and world photography. His work is characterised by technical precision, formal reduction, and simple composition which enables sophisticated expression. The artist’s well-thought-out studio compositions often contain the ideas of the relentlessness of the passage of time, uncertainty, and transience, arousing a feeling of concern in the beholder. The photographs, for which Pinkava chooses a hermetic space, draw on the content of archetypal human stories. Throughout his work, he works with traditional iconography, and vanitas and memento mori themes, whose traditional meanings he changes, updates, or empties, and thus creates a very unique visual language that reflects his specific way of thinking. Pinkava’s photographs often contain questions about the meaning of existence – the course of human life, its vulnerability, fragility, and the subsequent confrontation with death. Fascinated by the process of extinction, however, he does not perceive finiteness negatively, but rather as a beginning of something new, unknown, that transcends the limits of our knowledge. His works are represented in many Czech and international private collections and galleries (eg. Victoria & Albert Museum, London; National Gallery Prague; Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego; Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Museum of Fine Arts of Houston). His name is included in the German encyclopaedia of world photographers entitled Das Lexikon der Fotografen 1900 bis Heute.
Selected exhibitions:
Ivan Pinkava - Backtracking, House of Art, České Budějovice, CZE, 2020
Ivan Pinkava, Categories of Fiction, See+ Gallery, Beijing, CHN, 2015
Ivan Pinkava, Trônes délaissés, Stimultania Gallery, Strassbourg, FRA, 2015
Ivan Pinkava, Remains, AU Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington DC, USA, 2012
Ivan Pinkava: Heroes, Rudolfinum Gallery, Prague, CZE, 2004
Lacrima
2016
D Print on Photo Paper
signed on the reverse
81 × 108 cm
framed, glazed, No.1/3
ARTIST RECORD SALE
sold at 85th KODL Gallery Auction
Untitled
Untitled
Untitled2019
photograph (D-print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl Paper)
signed on the reverse
112,5 × 82,5 cm
framed, glazed, No. 1/10
sold
Moonshine2018
photograph (D-print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta Paper)
signed on the reverse
110,5 × 84 cm
framed, glazed, No. 3/10
sold
Dedicated to Jan Svoboda2017
D-Print na Museo Portfolio Photorag Paper, 1/10
32 × 42 cm
sold at 87th Auction of KODL Gallery
Collapse of Algorithm2020
photograph (D-print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Pearl Paper)
signed on the reverse
115,5 × 82 cm
framed, glazed, No. 2/10
sold
Great Feast2004
vintage gelatine silver print
signed on the reverse
60 × 85 cm
framed, glazed, No. 5/10
sold at 81st KODL Gallery Auction
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