Space Dog

For this year's edition of the Art in the City sculpture festival, on the theme RECONNECT, David Škaroupka chose from his work a sculpture called “Space-pes”, which in its idea and its message chimes perfectly with the curatorial call to reconnect with outer “physical” space and the natural world. The title “Space-pes” (Space-dog) is not cheap wordplay. It joins the figure of the “dog” with the term “space”, which points not only to outer space but ambiguously to both digital “online” and “offline” space. The title brings together and at the same time opens up an inviting play of meanings, to think about and to experience. It tells the viewer what the sculpture intends to say through its physical presence and how it will work in public space.

And so the dog becomes a guide across the border between the online and offline domains, and exercises its ability to act on people therapeutically. David Škaroupka's sculpture borrows that therapeutic power from the dog and reconnects us with a world freed from the binding net of the media. The artist casts the figure of the dog in the leading role and lets it carry all the meaning with complete assurance. The dog is modelled larger than life. In certain features the artist's idiom does not hide the influence of his informal mentor Stefan Milkov.

Text by PhDr Michal Tošner Ph.D., cultural anthropologist and curator

Imagine
that Space-dog is a guide between worlds:
– the digital one, the cosmic one, and the one
we live here and now, the physical one.
Space-dog is a crossing point,
standing on the edge of online and offline reality
and quietly leading us from one side to the other.
Try stopping by it for a while, slowing down, being.

Thanks for the realisation:
MCAE Systems
VOXELL