Jakub Tytykalo, Andrea Baštýřová – Metaphysical Bedtimestories

The work of Andrea Lédlová and Jakub Tytykalo is characterized by an artful search for an expression that has its starting point in skepticism. However, not in a melancholic skepticism, i.e. passive, but in an ironic skepticism, i.e. active and creative. Both recent graduates of Prague's AVU are united by both a sense of a certain childlike playfulness, but with elements of corrective ironic sarcasm, and a kind of inner restlessness that drives their work forward from the beginning. While "restlessness" shapes the choice of topics, often obscure, mocking, polemical, playfulness contributes to finding unusual forms that polemic, commentary or revolt speak for themselves.

Through their work, both artists create and establish a specific circle of narration focused on the motif of generational "retelling". The starting points can be different (e.g. a specific work of art from the past, a specific experience, a family legend, a mythical animal, a nightmare, a movie hero, a literary character, etc.). These starting points are then radically transformed by interventions in their "genetic structures": hence the defragmentation and deconstruction tendencies in Jakub Tytykalo's paintings and the material interjections emancipating "heroes" from their determined roles (the birth of materialized pseudo-heroism) in the drawings, sculptures and sewn objects of Andrea Lédlová.