Patrik Proško is an artist who masterfully navigates the intersections of hyperrealism, anamorphic illusion, and site-specific art, challenging our perceptions of reality through his intricate and ephemeral creations. His diverse body of work ranges from hyperrealistic sculptures of extinct creatures to complex anamorphic installations that reveal their full image only from specific angles. Proško’s site-specific projects, deeply intertwined with their environment, reflect on the transient yet impactful nature of existence and art.
In this engaging interview, Patrik Proško opens up about the intricacies of his artistic practices, sharing the challenges and inspirations behind his multifaceted creations. From the technicalities of crafting hyperrealistic sculptures to the philosophical considerations of ephemeral art, Proško provides a window into a career built on redefining the boundaries of visual and spatial art forms. Join us as we explore the depth and breadth of Proško’s visionary work and the profound questions it poses about reality, perception, and the role of art in shaping both.
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Brady Walker: How would you briefly introduce your work?
Patrik Proško: I would say that I straddle three artistic approaches. First and foremost, I am a sculptor, so they all share working with space and reality as a common theme and material for my work.
The first approach is hyperrealistic sculpture. I have used this technique to create scientific reconstructions of extinct animals, humans, and microscopic organisms. In this technique, the primary goal is to make the sculpture look as realistic as possible, like a living being. It’s about the most faithful imitation of reality.
The second approach is anamorphically illusory, where the appearance of reality can only be recognized only under certain circumstances and from a specific viewing angle. It involves the technique of anamorphic installations created from real objects, whose meaning is discernible only from one perspective. From other angles, the installation disintegrates before your eyes and loses its representational meaning.
The third approach involves site-specific installations and artistic interventions in the natural world, where reality itself becomes the sculptural material, paint canvas, subject of representation, and even the gallery space all at once. I create these installations in the landscapes of different countries around the world.
BW: How does one even begin creating anamorphic art like you do? It seems unfathomably complicated
PP: Yes, it is really very challenging. I started working on these installations in 2015, and the concept is based on creating portraits of significant historical figures from various objects and materials related to the subject’s legacy, telling their life story. When creating them, I have to think on multiple levels simultaneously in real-time.
First, I have to find things related to the life of the given personality. I always need a lot more items than I end up using, because I then do the installation ala prima without any preparation on the computer. When creating, each thing must have a specific size, that size must have a specific shape, and that size and shape must also have a specific color, because I also try to faithfully shade and model the portrait. So I need not only authentic and period things, but in different sizes and shapes, and in all those sizes, if possible, the full range of colors from light to dark.
Since each installation has its light source, and every physical object casts a shadow, I have to place each object in the installation so that it doesn’t cast an unwanted shadow where there should be light in the portrait.
Simultaneously, I must place each object precisely to the millimeter in a specific location and connect it to other objects in a way that creates a transportation system. This allows me to disassemble the installation, transport it to another location, and reassemble it in just a few hours.
At the same time, during the whole process, I have to constantly switch between the sculptural and painterly principles of perception, because although I am creating a sculptural installation, I am painting a two-dimensional portrait from the right point of view, only instead of paints and brushes I use colored objects.
My brain has to think on eight levels at once in one moment.
Check out Patrik’s Anamorphosis Exhibition
BW: But from the right perspective the portrait looks flat
PP: Yes. It’s a sculptural installation made from objects, but from the correct angle, it essentially becomes a painting. Instead of colors, I use differently colored objects arranged in space. It’s a bit of an assault on our perspective perception by mixing 3D and 2D space. So, during the creation process, I have to think like a sculptor and a painter simultaneously, which makes it about eight levels of thinking.
For instance, in the installation of Tomáš Baťa, I aimed to achieve an impressionistic effect where each shoe appears as a brushstroke in thick layers of paint.
BW: Your anamorphic work is most often the portrait of a famous person. Why is that?
PP: We have our own museum in Prague, the IAM Illusion Art Museum Prague, where most of my works are exhibited as a permanent collection. We established the museum in 2018, and it is the first museum in the Czech Republic focused on exploring and educating about illusionistic artistic techniques throughout history. We place these techniques in an art-historical context and use optical illusions to depict (primarily)Czech historical events and significant Czech figures which shaped our history and culture. We also support Czech artists with whom we collaborate on exhibitions. That’s why I primarily focus on portraits of historical figures.
For example, I created Nikola Tesla from various electrical appliances that wouldn’t function without his invention of alternating current. I also created a portrait of shoe manufacturer Tomáš Baťa using shoes, composer Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák from musical instruments, and so on.
I’ve also created an installation of the first president and founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, which is exhibited in the permanent collection of the Rahmi M. Koç Museum in Ankara, as well asTurkish collector Rahmi M. Koç himself, which is in the permanent collection of the Rahmi M. Koç Museum in Istanbul.
BW: Are you still working on a multi-perspective anamorph?
PP: Recently, I finished an anamorphic portrait of Václav Havel, who was the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989-1992 and the first president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. I have one two-perspective installation of composers Bedřich Smetana and Antonín Dvořák, which I created from a pile of musical instruments inside a piano, and I have in mind a five or maybe even more perspective installation that I want to attempt in the future, but that one is still a secret.
Check out Patrik’s Anamorphosis Exhibition
BW: Shapes of Strokes is a beautiful project. How do you create these pieces? What are you trying to say with these pieces?
PP: Shapes of Strokes is the third piece in a broader concept of contouring, where I attempt to visualize painters’ pure handwriting in contrast to their illusory depiction of reality. Half of the painting is covered with black paint, obscuring the illusory perspective representation of the landscape and the light moods created by color shades. I then selectively extract only the relief handwriting of the painter using a white line. I focus solely on the shapes of color as material substance, and even though I don’t see the original continuation of the motif due to the black covering, it eventually reappears for me in the white line. This means that the painter not only creates an illusion of reality based on color shades but also sculpts it, or rather models it in relief.
The painting is divided precisely in half, allowing each eye to observe the two halves separately. However, it’s practically impossible because our eyes look in perspective. So, we end up looking at two different images, and our eyes have to jump from one motif to the other.
One half of the painting gives the impression as if it were immersed in a black and white emulsion of a graphical interface.
BW: Tell me about your scientific sculptures. You’ve created a range of odd sculptures, including the tardigrade and dust mite, the glyptodon and wooly mammoth, and several Cro-magnon men. How do these projects come about?
PP: These are the projects where I use the technique of hyperrealistic sculpture to achieve the most faithful imitation of reality. They are scientific reconstructions of extinct animals and humans from the Ice Age (such as mammoths and Cro-magnon men) or microscopic organisms like the dust mite and tardigrade. These projects often involve close collaboration with scientists, paleontologists, and experts in the field to ensure accuracy.
We developed our own exhibition called Microcosmos, with the concept based on the idea that tiny organisms, which we usually observe from above and can only see clearly under a microscope, suddenly become larger than us, and they look down on us. These sculptures are around three meters in size.
But my biggest sculpture so far was the mammoth, which is 6 meters tall.
BW: Tell me about Genius Loci and more broadly about your site-specific environment painting.
PP: Site-specific projects are my personal artistic journey, and thus, they hold the greatest value for me. So far, I have managed to create over 90 projects in 33 countries, and they all share one common characteristic – none of them exists anymore. They are ephemeral, and the only things that remain after them are photographs and videos. I perceive ephemerality as a fundamental, lasting value that profoundly influences everything we do in life and when we do it.
Genius Loci was my first project in 2013 that initiated this path. Genius loci as a projection of a possible future in which we shape the world in our own image, even in a painted image. In most projects, I seek ways to view not only the reality in which I operate but also artistic concepts from different angles than the previous artistic conventions. For example, I consider Genius Loci as a classical landscape painting. However, due to the tradition of landscape painting dating back to the early 16th century, when we hear the term “landscape painting,” we typically think of an image of the landscape painted on canvas or board, rather than anything else. My endeavor is to expand this tradition by introducing the technique of painting directly onto the landscape, a technique that transforms the landscape into a thematic element of the composition and simultaneously into a temporary gallery space.
BW: You’ve done so many of these non-invasive landscape paintings, installations, and art pieces — what does the ideation process look like? Do you just walk around thinking, Where I can tweak things?
PP: First and foremost, I do not want to harm nature or anyone’s property. When I paint in nature, I use biodegradable paint with an ecological safety certificate or slaked lime, which, after the first rain, acts more like fertilizer. And when I work with other materials that I bring into nature, I always clean up and take everything away after completing the project.
All these interventions represent a way of relating to the surrounding world, which I can perceive more freely, especially when I am on the road, disconnected from the existential obligations of everyday life and far from home. When I am at home in Prague, my inner perspective is primarily turned inward, where I am constantly dealing with something. Responsibilities at the museum, communication, relationships, investments, commercial projects, and so on. Outside in the environment I know, I move automatically; I don’t have to think so much about how to get somewhere, and even when I’m driving a car, I do it automatically and think about something other than driving the car.
However, when I completely disconnect from the system for two, three, or more months and come to a new, preferably exotic, socially and culturally different place, I can turn my gaze from within myself outward to the surrounding world. I call it gaining “absolute freedom” when, for several months, I only do what I want and what I consider valuable. Not what someone else wants from me or what the market or the system demands. Thanks to this, new perspectives and themes open up for me, and I see the world in different contexts. I left my problems at home, have minimal influence on them, and view them from a distance and a different perspective. This reinforces or even changes my hierarchy of values, which can then be reflected in these projects.
The places I pass through in these countries then guide me in this perspective, playing a central role in the work. I project all my previous experiences, conceptual frameworks, and artistic approaches into them, as I described earlier. There are many themes everywhere.
BW: Your work toys with perception and reinterprets the world around us. As broadly as you can put it, what does all of this reinterpretation add up to?
PP: I believe I’ve already described it, but there’s one thing I haven’t mentioned. In some countries, I create my site-specific projects together with local people, such as in Malaysia, Africa, Indonesia or Yemen, giving the work a social dimension, turning them into social-specific projects. This adds a higher personal value to the work for me. The reinterpretation of the world is an endless process, just like the search for the ideal in art. However, we must never find and definitively define it because we would lose what we can aspire to. The ideal is a fluid and ever-changing concept.
BW: Do you see your work as instructive in any way?
PP: I’m just offering possibilities for seeing the world around us and trying to view it from various perspectives. Art is my visual language in which I can encode these perspective windows. The wide range of artistic expression provides me with tools to visualize these codes, which is why I don’t focus solely on one technology, craft, or material. Each project is different and requires a different material or expressive medium to make that visual code pure. But yes, I expect more from art than just it being beautiful. That would be very limited. That’s why I also consciously approach my work and try to articulate it in words. I write texts for all my projects, which help me in their development and self-discovery. Art is only as rich as the person who creates it, and that’s probably the main lesson for me.
BW: What do creative blocks look like in the kind of work you do?
PP: I don’t have any creative blocks. On the contrary, I believe that human creativity has no limits, and the form of continuous learning, understanding new things, opens up new paths not only to understanding but also to new creative processes. That’s why I started educating myself in NFTs and blockchain technology
BW: And what makes NFT technology interesting for you?
PP: Primarily, it offers me the opportunity to digitally certify my work on the internet, and Proof of Authenticity is the main reason why I am in this space. Several times, someone has stolen my work and passed it off as their own, or they have used it for affiliate marketing. Once it was even misused in an international advertising campaign. Proof of Authenticity clearly demonstrates authorship, and blockchain metadata is now accepted as evidence in legal proceedings.
NFT technology has also opened up new possibilities for me to expand my work into new formats. For example, anamorphic installations. I have to create them from physical objects in reality, but then, with my digital partner Andrej Boleslavsky, we use photogrammetric scanning to digitize them. We take photos of the installation from all angles, and from hundreds to thousands of photos, we create a digital 3D model that can be used in virtual galleries, augmented reality, games, and more. Collectors are particularly interested in these 3D models because they have real-world applications. We also create authorized 3D animations from them.
NFT technology is also important to me for my site-specific projects. However, these installations are ephemeral and no longer exist in the physical world. They only exist as a documentary record on the blockchain as proof of authenticity that they really happened by my hand.
BW: What piece of advice would you give yourself about creativity and the creative process if you could travel back in time five years?
PP: Five years ago, I wouldn’t give myself any advice because I was already on the path that has led me to where I am today. We have our own museum and I have absolute freedom, and financial independence. But all of this began in 2013. Before that, I was living a very difficult life, and I was spending my time and what I had learned in life on fulfilling the dreams of others or corporations. I had nothing, I wasn’t free, and I was very poor, and I didn’t even know who I truly was. It took so long that at the age of 33, I decided to change everything from scratch, and only then did I start to search for myself. I had to go back to the beginning of my life and gradually confront my demons to understand who I really am, to recognize my potential, and to define a new path where I could give that potential a chance.
Today, I’m very glad that I embarked on that journey.
Visit Patrik Proško’s MakersPlace Profile
