Pavel Dušek

Painter, maker of concrete reliefs and of interventions in public space. Born on 11 August 1992 in Hradec Králové, he lives and works in Prague. He studied at the Secondary Technical School of Civil Engineering in Hradec Králové (2008–2012) and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (2012–2018), in Professor Michael Rittstein’s Painting III studio; in 2016 he completed a placement at ISI Yogyakarta in Indonesia. In 2021 he won the Critics’ Prize for Young Painting. Although he is a painter, he uses sculptural methods — besides paint he works above all with material: concrete, cement, metal and acrystal. He is concerned with the energy, temperature and visual properties of materials; material is for him both a medium of expression and the subject of the work itself. His landscape motifs incorporate elements of the gaming environment, shifting the traditional perception of landscape and connecting the real and the gaming world.

He became known for his interventions in public space — he has hung dozens of concrete panels bearing pictures around Prague, and he is co-author of the mural at Vltavská in Prague (with Jozef Šmíd). He has exhibited actively since 2012; group exhibitions include Winter Compost (2013), Rooms (2015, 2017), 4 (2016), Future Ready (2018), and solo shows Paint’n’game (2018), Live Platform (2019), (Un)shared (2019). As part of Art in the City 2021 in České Budějovice he made a work in acrylic on concrete on Zátkovo nábřeží (installed 2–8 August 2021). He is represented by Trafo Gallery and Jan Cejka Gallery, among others.