Meeting Dürer (a travelogue)

2022
Series of 14 photographs and texts, framed

On a particularly melancholic winter morning, I took a train to Brno, a city in the Czech Republic, to see Albrecht Dürer's five centuries old engraving "Melancholia" in the depository of the Moravian Gallery.
Although not anticipated, the journey itself became an artwork. With an analog camera and diary notes, I recorded moments that led to the final one: when Tereza, the head of the Print and Drawing collection, lifted the last fine layer of silk paper and our eyes met Dürer's mysterious, enigmatic print.

Before meeting Dürer’s work, I observed the morning light from my apartment, was fascinated by the curious serendipities that took place during the journey, talked to taxi drivers and met strangers on the train, and also, in a way, met myself anew. About all that, I reported with an almost journalistic approach.

Meeting Dürer is about being on a journey, physically and mentally, and how this experience feeds one dimension of our being in the world.
Meeting Dürer is also about what being an artist means to me – to take in the world with boundless curiosity, to return to the art process as if coming back to a nourishing source, a deep well.

Installation shots by Radek Brousil and Jakub Hájek