Matěj Frank

Matěj Frank (*1989, Opava) is a visual artist moving along the axis Vienna – Chudobín – Wrocław; he has long been based in Wrocław and Opava. He works in sculpture, spatial installation, sound art, performance and conceptual drawing. He is interested in slow processes and in the transience of the everyday; he explores space, which he enters with a gesture or with sound. His measure is the human body — both his own, living body and figurative, artificial forms; he looks for relationships between fullness and emptiness, transience and permanence, and works with chance and improvisation within firmly set premises.

Education: Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Ostrava, sculpture (2008–2011); Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław, sculpture (2011–2014, his diploma work was awarded as the best diploma project); Universidad del País Vasco, Faculty of Fine Arts, Bilbao, Spain (2012–2013, Erasmus). He taught in the sculpture department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław from 2016 to 2022. He is also a curator and programmer, among other places at the Opava society for contemporary art Bludný kámen.

Residencies and scholarships: Kunst in der Natur, Gars am Kamp, Austria (2025); Sculpture Quadrennial Riga, Latvia — artist in residence (2021–2024); a scholarship from the Czech Ministry of Culture (2019–2021); MoKS artist in residence, Mooste, Estonia (2019); a scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2018); ART BnB residency, Jerusalem, and Styria Artist in Residence, Graz (2017).

Awards: 3rd prize in the competition for a memorial to the victims of the attack at the Ostrava hospital (2020); CBM Art Prize, Turin (2017); the prize for the best diploma work and the ZAiKS prize (2014).

Exhibitions and works (selection): Art in the City 2019, České Budějovice — present / absent (iron, the Munický pond, Černá v Pošumaví); Art in the City 2021 — Trialogue (steel, Piaristické náměstí, České Budějovice); Nobody’s Bodies, Kaple Gallery, Valašské Meziříčí (2022/2023, curated by Leszek Wojaczek); The Death of the Sun. Empty Places, House of Art, Opava (2024); A New Sculpture in Opava — sculpture symposium (2024).