The game is clear. The boundaries are set, rules defined, and, as long as the players respect the rules, while relying on their infallible intuition and common sense, the outcome of the game is easy to predict. Everything is going according to the plan; everything is where it should be. Suddenly, at the moment when the game’s established models of development seem unshakeable, there is an intruder entering the playing-field. By several moves he shifts the boundaries, skews the rules; confused players are confronted with a situation outside of their abilities. This diversionist is Patrik Pelikán (1987), who, with the skills of an experienced midfielder, forces us to step out of our comfort zones. 

Patrik Pelikán’s strategy remains constant since his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Supervised by Jitka Svobodová and Jiří Petrbok, he studied drawing and engaged in the Printmaking Studio II led by Vladimír Kokolia. Consistency, however, does not mean numbness. Rather, it showcases a focused and in-depth interest in certain topics which are systematically explored. Drawing, sculpture, and architecture – together with the mason’s skills – are equally important tools for Pelikán. With these tools, he evokes destabilising situations which urge us to change, at least for a little while, our point of view. 

Pelikán’s artistic thinking bears aspects of the architect’s practicality yet remains poetically magical. He always refers to a specific space – that is, architecture – which he perceives as an independent and organic structure. He reacts to its construction, material, and details. Most importantly, however, he engages with its history and symbolism. He empathises with the ‘character’ of the place and intervenes to complete it, accentuating its features, or contradicting them. His interventions may be monumental, or they may be so subtle that they don’t even permeate into one’s consciousness, but merely stir an inkling that things are not quite what they seem. The environments he creates resemble minimalist theatre sets built on the principles of a dream logic: the most familiar – often insignificant – details suddenly appear uncanny. This sudden uncanniness infuses them with a strange energy, gives them meaning. 

For the titles of his exhibitions, Patrik Pelikán often chooses adverbs: a part of speech used to convey a detailed description of actions and features of time, place or manner. The word ‘across’ aptly illustrates the features of the project for Kabinet T. Gallery: it suggests something irritating, disturbing and presenting an obstacle. Indeed, the construction of obstacles (physical or mental, often both at the same time) is Pelikán’s specialty. 

As soon as the gallery’s door opens, we encounter the edge of a newly built wall diagonally splitting the gallery space into two corridors. Although the corridors imply a final destination, such an expectation is not met. At the end of the corridors, there is no climax, no treasure to be found, not even a further passage. There is no catharsis. What culminates is the frustration in the room closing the left part of the gallery. Its walls are covered with a dark band marked by thin horizontal strips triggering a sense of vibration. Is it we who are vibrating or is it the walls? Pelikán puts us into situations indistinguishable from Chinese koans, whose irrational stories pose questions instead of solutions, steer enlightenment to free the mind of stereotypical concepts. The graphical structuring on the walls resembles the gills of louvers. We find ourselves in a trap of optical illusion where our empirical knowledge fails. The atmosphere of this environment is unearthed by a ubiquitous, obtrusive sound coming from an untraceable source. 

Furthermore, specific qualities of the utilised materials serve a significant role in offering such a complex experience. A meticulous crafting is crucial for the artist. Pelikán is not an artistic director who cedes the manual production to others. He physically engages in each phase of the production and stands not only as an architect but also as a builder, a mason, a painter, and, ultimately, a demolition man.   

Between the floor and the ceiling of the main room in Kabinet T. Gallery, Pelikán raised a wooden construction sheathed with hardboard desks. Later, this structure was strengthened with a construction glue and fittings. This was followed by stretching a lime stucco which, before the material dried, needed to be ‘span’ by a foam trowel. Finally, a dark-toned cement was moulded by a comb into vertical plastic strips, endowing the walls with haptic, brutalist features. The op-art effect of the rhythmic pattern of graphical elements unearthed by the lighting helps to deform the spatial perspective – that is, indeed, the artist’s aim. 

Here and in previous works, Patrik Pelikán develops, with his distinctive artistic language, the principles of land art, Conceptualism, and Minimalism as he draws upon the works of Richard Long, the illusive spaces of James Turrell, the monumental sculptures of Richard Serra, and the video-art of Bruce Nauman. He pays attention to two peculiar cases: 

Crime scene 1: 141 Wooster Street, Soho, Manhattan, New York. An inconspicuous street and an even more inconspicuous house. You ring the bell downstairs and then climb a narrow staircase to the second floor. You go through a shabby corridor with a red linoleum floor and reach a cash register. Suddenly, you smell soil, freshly ploughed. Then you see it. It goes up to your knees and covers the whole of the 335 m2 flat. Walter De Maria, an American musician and visual artist, brought 140 tonnes of soil into his The Earth Room in 1977, which remains intact to this day. 

Crime scene 2: Saatchi Gallery, London. This time, you descend a staircase into a basement of a monumental Classicist palace. Behind a glass door there is a room horizontally split by a smooth black plane which perfectly reflects the surrounding architecture while evoking a sense of a neverending depth. It embraces white pillars and the edges of a pier which plunge below the level of a glassy surface. The British artist Richard Wilson created this installation, 20:50, between 1991 and 2015, transforming a basement into a pool filled with recycled engine oil. 

Even though you knew what you are putting yourselves into, there was an inevitable moment of surprise. What was their idea? What was their message? How come the oil doesn’t get soaked into the walls and the soil doesn’t dry up? And are there any worms? … Both these now iconic installations pose many questions and offer no answers. Things are not quite what they seem. It is precisely the undermining of an established paradigm and a steering of existential questions which forms the essential effect of the artworks of De Maria, Wilson – and of Patrik Pelikán. However, this is just one of the many facets of his work.