Shake Off the Skin

2025

Curated by Michaela Mellová & Jiří Petrbok

Shake Off the Skin brings together Matěj Pokorný and Jan Štulíř in a shared dialogue of emotion, distortion, and form — where the boundary between figuration and abstraction begins to dissolve. Both artists studied in Jiří Petrbok’s drawing studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and now reconnect through painting and object.

Pokorný paints like an eruption — raw, fragile, suspended between destruction and rebirth. Štulíř, by contrast, explores the invisible layers of being: molecules, identity, the subconscious. One carves into the image, the other caresses it. Together, they ask: how many versions of yourself can exist before you’re no longer you?