Krištof Kintera: Building Sculptures and Girl with a Dove

The entrance to the park at Klarov opposite Kunsthalle Praha leads not only to the park itself but also to a sculptural micro-city by the artist Krištof Kintera, who has created works based on seven actual buildings constructed in the second half of the past century in Prague. Sensitively embedded in the uneven terrain, these concrete miniatures reflect a conventional urban environment comprised of current, demolished, and utopian buildings, including a church, bank, TV tower, shopping mall, central telecommunication building, housing estate, and hotel. They exist in natural symbiosis with the central, and sole remaining element of the original park – a sculpture of a girl with a dove from 1958 by Václav Šimek. 

The reign of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia from 1948 until the Velvet Revolution in 1989 caused a cultural slowdown, but this limited arena also allowed for the emergence of the groundbreaking architecture of international significance. However, to this day, Czech society accepts this fact only with a certain degree of ambiguity, and the burden presented by the unscrupulous communist regime causes a continuous lack of appreciation. Unfortunately, such an attitude has been demonstrated in several tragic demolitions, such as the case of the grand Hotel Praha, or the planned takedown of the ÚTB (Central Telecommunication Building) in the Žižkov district. For a long time, Prague-born Krištof Kintera has been following the unpleasant process of erasing the social memory of the city, and he has decided to react by transforming selected buildings into sculptures – artworks that offer a completely new framework for perceiving brutalist architecture. Diverse measurements, dramatic lighting, and demolished parts evoke the fluctuating popularity of these buildings, yet Krištof Kintera’s utopian city is first and foremost a clear demonstration of the powerful architecture in oppressed times. 

The project Building Sculptures and Girl with a Dove is a natural continuation of the opening exhibition of Kunsthalle Praha titled Kinetismus: 100 Years of Electricity in Art.