In today’s world, the human face is under pressure. On a biological level, the face is an indispensable tool for communication, and this is logically reflected in various strategies that are used in advertising and marketing. The ubiquitous cult of beautiful young faces dominates our public sphere. It has become an iconic construct of success – putting pressure on those who do not meet this criterion. The face is a tool for influencing people, and those who are involved in this game resort to various facial modifications in order to ensure that their appearance is sufficiently effective.
In contemporary figurative painting, on the other hand, we can witness a significant tendency not to depict the human face – to conceal it entirely, to deform it, or to replace it with different objects. This creates a striking inverse polarity between what happens to the human face in the public sphere (including social media) and the facelessness that we can see in works of art. The absence of faces can express a speculative paradox that highlights the processes by which faces become superfluous or are abused.

Exhibiting authors:
Josef Bolf, Aleš Brázdil, Václav Buchtelík, Jakub Čuška, Dalibor David, Jakub Janovský, Adéla Janská, David Jedlička, Samuel Kollárik, Jiří Kuděla, Pavla Malinová, Jiří Marek, Barbora Mikudová, Daniel Pitín, Zbyněk Sedlecký, Adam Štech, Tomáš Tichý, Jan Vytiska

Curator: Jaroslav Michna

Gallery of Fine Arts in Ostrava