CURRENT PICTURE OF PETRBOK'S PORTFOLIO

The portfolio of the painter Jiří Petrboko (b. 1962) presents a unique view of the artist's recent exhibition activities. The first sheets of this series began to appear about two years ago. Originally, he worked on them only during his rest periods, when he could not work in the studio and spent time with his family at the cottage. 
With the earliest sheets, one might think that what was created, as it were, unintentionally, were only marginal reflections on oneself. But Petrbok soon realised the full significance of the magic of reinterpretation, and consistently began to return to the theme of his own or collective exhibitions, where random, even curious, connections were made between individual exhibits. Thus, he also processed his older photographic documentation in a painterly manner, in order to recall projects that had been seen by perhaps only a small number of people and which, perhaps thanks to the permanent austerity of domestic culture, had remained without a proper response and the usually desirable catalogues. 

As the number of entries increased, the set of sheets that the author ...he called a portfolio for practically personal reasons, became visibly concentrated. His individual sheets gained in importance by linking them into a whole, since the interconnection of details and the factual connections of diverse perceptions of reality can entertain the observer in new and unexpected ways. Incidentally, the hybrid connection of diverse themes is characteristic of Petrbok's entire work, which catches our attention at first glance not only by its legible autobiographical elements in the context of generally seen socio-cultural situations, but also by the formal perfectionism of the painterly finesse of an expert who invents and guards his own technological procedures. From Petrbok's point of view, formats do not matter. He has mastered his craft perfectly, which is not at all obvious on our domestic art scene, and even in the entirety of his portfolio, regardless of the size of the individual sheets, he is able to spectacularly capitalise on the contents and forms of everyday reality, in the midst of which each person must stand alone.

However, the exhibited set of portfolio sheets, adjusted into wooden boxes in the form of relics, can also be considered as a possible reflection on the meaning and authenticity of the painting. Perhaps that is why the author has innovated and expanded the number of sheets of the portfolio presentation, which was recently presented to the Prague public at the Petr Novotný Gallery, with new connections. The core of the exhibition in Zlín is thus made up of almost miniature paintings on A4 size handmade paper, often created with the help of a magnifying glass, using tiny brushes and acrylic paints. Jiří Petrbok has also included in the exhibition at Kabinet T a characteristic and at the same time "heartfelt contemporary" large-format painting, which again shows one of his many possible gallery installations. It is certainly worth noting that the aforementioned painting is already part of Petrbok's portfolio at the Zlín exhibition. His otherwise traditional layout of a perspectively built pictorial composition is thematized with Petrbokovian hybridization and in the colours of our tricolour, a kind of insight into the exposition of art without borders, symbolically guarded by the lion as an attribute of Czech national significance.

As already mentioned, Jiří Petrbok is constantly updating his painted portfolio. He does not only present glimpses or fragmentary sections from public or private interiors or exteriors, where we could see in the past: Vernon Gallery, Prague's Lucerna, Brno's Vaňkovka, Olomouc's Caesar, Na Bidýlku, Karel Tutsch's kitchen, also his own apartment, Kunsthalle Krems, Art Factory, 5th floor, the City Library and the Old Town Hall of the Prague City Gallery, Dvorak Sec Contemporary Gallery, Klub Hořovice, etc., but perhaps according to the laws of the media market, above all what is supposed to be interesting as contemporary. Petrbok's reflection on the timeliness and topicality of the image has, at least in my opinion, quite complex ambitions: the static projection of an already older exhibition event is at least a polemic in which the commensurability of linear time in human life has often ceased to apply. And so here in Zlín, albeit on a small surface, we have the actual opportunity to encounter the sophisticated work of a painter who mentally and physically evokes images whose role in human life is perhaps more ubiquitous than ever before and since. What ever has been is again and again, figuratively and factually, in the spectacle of multidimensional reality with Jiří Petrbok, the old reality is rearranged and transformed on new foundations...

Pavel Netopil