A Czech Damien Hirst. That’s how Kristof Kintera is usually described, courtesy of his bizarre and provocative sculptures and installations. An enfant terrible on the Czech art scene, he openly criticizes the rapid economic expansion of former Soviet and totalitarian regimes, the consumerist society we live in,and the draconian security measures we are subjected to.
Kintera uses everyday objects and places them in an unusual context. Or what to make of an electric knife penetrating a melon? His kinetic sculptures are the result of elaborate research on and with robots and are highly sophisticated: they move, talk, produce smoke or sparks… His works are often funny at first sight, but what lies underneath is a critical view on today’s society. In the 2006 installation Revolution, we see a child repeatedly banging its head against a wall. An extremely confrontational image, expressing emotions such as fear, despair, loneliness, frustration, and hopelessness.
Kintera on art: “It’s about pronouncing things. It’s about communication. For me it’s not about revolution anymore. That’s just probably just something from the 1960s. I don’t believe that art can make political changes or foment revolutions. It’s more about tender, invisible energies or things that are not pronounced by the media or commercial companies.”
In early 2009 Kintera was involved in the piece Entropa, which Czech artist David Cerny and 27 other European artists produced for the European Union. The piece caused a stir because of its clichéd depiction of several EU countries. Belgium, for example, was portrayed as a half-eaten box of chocolates. After a complaint from Bulgaria, which was represented as Turkey’s toilet, it emerged that the work had not been made by 27 artists from the European member states, but by a team led by Cerny himself, among which was Kintera.
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