Michal Trpak

Czech Republic

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Michal Trpak - Video


Michal Trpak was born in 1982 in the Czech Republic. His art studies started at Secondary School of Arts in Cesky Krumlov. After he went to study at Academy of Arts and Design in Prague where he took his masters degree. During this studies he went to 2 one-year exchange stay to Lahti in Finland and Vancouver in Canada.

After graduating from Prague in 2007, he started to work as an artist and apart from it he finished his PhD at Academy of Arts in Banska Bystrica-Slovakia. Since 2007, Michal Trpak organizes a sculpture exhbition in public spaces of Ceske Budejovice called ART.

In the city where sculptors from the Czech Republic and sometimes from abroad, exhibit their works during the summer. The sculptures and paintings made by Michal Trpak are in public spaces and private collections in Czech Republic, Germany, Russia, France and Canada.  Besides studying and creating artistic projects, Michal Trpak travels to various countries, mainly in Asia, to get inspiration and to clear his mind from a hectic European lifestyle.
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The sculptures that I make are meant mainly for public spaces. I believe that sculptures belong to architecture, public space or landscape. This is how the sculptures were used for centuries in the past. Historic cities in Europe and Prague are great example of towns full of sculptures.

Just recently, in the last century, artists did not need to be craftsmen and start to exhibit art in galleries, where you can place almoust anything and call it art, first to come up with something new, than to shock. Since then there is less and less cooperation between the architect and artist-sculptor. There may be a reason in a new way of making architecture and now a more conceptional way of making art.

It all started in the Architecture of Loos's and Corbusier's funtionalism and minimalism - pure, straight lines without curves or art. Nowadays we are moving slowly back to organic architecture and some architects start to understand that art and architecture belong together. For architecture, it is a must to be functional but this doesn't apply to art. Art is in a way irrational intuitive and can bring something special and "nice"... to the space or architecture and to enrichen it.

In my works I work with topics of our present society and with the actual space, where I am installing my works. In a gallery it is possible to put almost anything as it is a sort of impotent space - white walls and socles... But in real architecture and public spaces, artists have to think about the scale, idea and way of installation and that is what makes it more interesting.

When I have my works displayed in my studio it is never the same as if I install them in a good spot in the city or incorporated in some architecture - if the instaltion is good, it makes the work better and in the relation with the space makes the architecture better, too. This is the dialog I am trying to have with my art, dialogue among my art, architecture and people. And if the people are talking about the installation and if it somehow affects them it means that it is good.

An artist does not need to talk about it, if the art piece can talk itself and the strories are told by the people and not by the artist. As a reset I believe that the artist's language is his work not his words - they are the tools of writers, philosophers or art critics.
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