Interview „Šimon Sýkora: Rites of Spring. Conversation about more than just the exhibition“
July – September 2025 – art magazine Flash Art (Czech & Slovak edition)
print no. 76 “Magic and Myths”
ENG translation
Eva Slabá: Why did you decide to travel to Taiwan during your studies? Did you already have some connection to Asian cultures? In older texts about your work, there is often mention of the influence of anime, manga, or computer games.
Šimon Sýkora: Studying at the Academy of Fine Arts offers a great opportunity to travel, and I wanted to make the most of it. Taiwan was recommended to me by classmates who spoke about it very positively. I’m not much of a gamer, nor a big fan of anime, but there it’s impossible to avoid, so it naturally seeped into my work – albeit more subconsciously than programmatically. I came back with several sketchbooks into which I glued various flyers and found materials.
ES: I’d like to focus on the sketchbooks for a moment, because you have one on display at your current exhibition at Polansky Gallery. Was it the first time you publicly exhibited such a diary-like archive? How does it differ for you from paintings on canvas?
ŠS: I exhibited one, for example, at my graduation show. It’s a visual diary; I feel slightly embarrassed about some of the pages, but perhaps that’s precisely why it felt important to show it. I wipe my brushes into it and take it with me when I travel, and sometimes my nieces draw in it as well. It’s looser than the paintings I make now – the two approaches don’t really intersect much.
ES: After Taiwan you went to Bucharest. Judging by your repeated returns, I’d say the city made a strong impression on you. Why?
ŠS: I had already been there before, in 2016. For me as a painter, it’s a very visceral city, and I also feel more alive there, though I understand that for some it may feel inhospitable. The approach and character of Romanians feel very close to me. I formed friendships with several painters, some of whom I introduced last year in an exhibition in Prague (Sluggishness/Liknavost, 2024, Polansky Gallery, author's note).
ES: Is your interest in local painting connected to the much-discussed Cluj School?
ŠS: Originally I wanted to travel to Romania because of the paintings of Șerban Savu and the atmosphere of films by directors such as Radu Jude or Cristian Mungiu. Before the residency I was influenced by the dark figuration of Cluj painting, but once I was there, I realized it wasn’t my true position.
ES: Why do you think that is?
ŠS: At that time I shut myself away for several weeks and painted in a rented studio apartment near Gara de Nord railway station, where I felt quite afraid. Although Cluj painting impressed me both thematically and formally, I gradually realized that in my case it was more a repetition of a mannerism that wasn’t truly my own. Still, I try to follow contemporary painting from Cluj, which has changed a lot, and many great things are happening there – I’d like to mention, for example, Adela Giurgiu.
ES: Returning to your current exhibition, one of the canvases bears the name of a town in Romania.
ŠS: Yes, it’s the mountain town of Sinaia in Transylvania. I spent a few days there with the painter Luca Florian.
ES: That painting is quite different from the others.
ŠS: I began working on it in Bucharest at the Malmaison residency studio, which during the Ceaușescu era housed the secret police, and the place had a very oppressive atmosphere. It’s a figurative painting, but I work more with decor and ornament there.
ES: Was the exhibition title Rites of Spring your idea?
ŠS: The title emerged in the studio, but it wasn’t my idea. I’ve always wanted to open my studio to close creative people, and over the past year that’s been working quite well – while I paint, someone else works beside me on their own things, and naturally we talk about our work. One of the paintings shares the same title; it’s a landscape with melting snow, two men, and animals. It reflects the accompanying text by John Hill, where he mentions a comparison with a scene from the Chinese film Unknown Pleasures – a man rides his motorcycle up a hill and lights a cigarette. That simple act suddenly becomes something ritualistic.
“In the film Unknown Pleasures, directed in 2002 by Jia Zhangke, there is a long scene in which one of the characters repeatedly tries to start his motorcycle in an attempt to ride up a dirt mound on the edge of the city of Datong, an industrial prefecture in northern China. When he reaches the top, he lights a cigarette and looks out over the housing estates and the mountains beyond. Visually, this inhospitable urban realism shares almost nothing with the fully saturated rural landscapes of Šimon Sýkora, yet their protagonists find themselves in very similar situations. For the characters in Zhangke’s film, this purposelessness is dispiriting, but Sýkora allows his figures to fully accept the situation. Being outside the city becomes a source of enrichment, even self-empowerment. At the end of Unknown Pleasures, one character is arrested, the other leaves his motorcycle behind and hitchhikes out of the city. The edges of the city are closer than we think; imagined boundaries hold us captive only if we allow them to.”
– John Hill, accompanying text to the exhibition Rites of Spring, Polansky Gallery, April 10 – May 24, 2025
ES: You often choose specific clothing for your figures, a particular type of fashion. Landscapes and dwellings can be perceived as ahistorical, unless they’re warehouses or housing estates, but clothing often situates the narrative in a particular time – whether puffer jackets, printed hoodies, or a Pikachu mask, for instance in the painting Caffeine. Is this intentional?
ŠS: I usually draw from real situations, so the figures wear contemporary clothing – puffer jackets or masks naturally emerge from specific experiences.
ES: I was also intrigued by the painting Sehnsucht, a term describing a painful longing for something distant, almost unattainable, often associated with Romanticism. In front of it stands a small cottage. How did you arrive at that? Some interpretations trace the concept back to a myth articulated in Plato’s Symposium.
ŠS: I discovered the term Sehnsucht in a book by Štěpán Smolen about romantic longing. But the painting stems from a specific object – a small cottage I found on Facebook for free. It was offered by a man whose daughter had made it as a school project, decorated it with crystals, and they wished for it to find further use. The crystals then inspired me to create a small myth – in the paintings they appear as ritual motifs or objects of worship. A kind of fictional “new age” narrative emerged, built on chance and a child’s gesture.
ES: Back to the sketchbook displayed on a wooden pedestal – this is not very typical for you either.
ŠS: The pedestal was made by my father, who is a graphic designer and a great admirer of J. Váchal. My parents once moved from the city to a rectory in the Šumava region precisely because they associated that landscape with Váchal and his world.
ES: But you later moved to Dešenice, right? In the titles and motifs of your paintings, the periphery, countryside, borders, and forgotten localities often appear – Warehouse, Borderland, No Trespassing, In Transit, Brownfield Recordings, Outskirts, Homesick, Backyard.
ŠS: It’s probably a feeling of a certain rootlessness. I don’t feel entirely like a rural person, nor like a city person; I need to inhabit both places, but being in between can be demanding, because you sometimes feel you don’t fully belong anywhere.
ES: In Bucharest you were even given the nickname “străin” (“stranger”). Stranger is the title of one of your paintings, and Turning Stranger the title of an exhibition. In the past, hats frequently appeared in your works – headgear as protection during wandering, hermit-like figures, flâneurs, and similar types. Do you feel this is still relevant for you?
ŠS: The archetype of the pilgrim still interests me, and the possibility to paint in different countries was crucial for me, but now I work well in Prague. Years ago I was probably attempting some kind of flânerie; now I’m more interested in community and sharing. It doesn’t reflect that much in the paintings – perhaps there are simply more figures.
ES: Your work is often described with words such as melancholy, longing, loneliness, and rootlessness. But an important component is also a certain irony, or what is often called post-irony today. What does it mean to you, and how do you perceive it in your works?
ŠS: My irony draws heavily from Thomas Bernhard and sometimes manifests in the paintings very subtly. I try to find a balance between emotion and humor, because it helps me maintain distance and prevents the paintings from slipping into pathos.
ES: Finally, can you tell me something about that cluster on the door?
ŠS: I’ve been creating such mood boards for a long time—there are reproductions of T. K. Csontváry or C. D. Friedrich, landscapes photographed from a train, and a mixture of Romanian naïve and folk art, which has really captivated me.
Šimon Sýkora (b. 1990) currently lives and works in Prague. He studied at the Studio of Multimedia at the Ladislav Sutnar Faculty of Design and Art in Plzeň, and later at the Painting IV (M. Mainer), Painting II (V. Skrepl), and Painting I (R. Šalanda) studios at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He completed residencies in Bucharest (UNArte, under Prof. Petru Lucaci), Taiwan (Taipei National University of the Arts), and at the Šaloun Studio with visiting lecturers Sus Zwick and Muda Mathis. He subsequently returned to Bucharest twice through residencies at the Czech Centre (2023) and ARC Bucharest (2024). Last year he also undertook a residency at Kebbel Villa in Schwandorf, Germany.
His work has been presented in solo exhibitions at Sandwich Gallery (Bucharest), Galerie SPZ (Prague), GASK (Kutná Hora), and in a duo installation at Berlínskej Model (Prague) and Jelení Gallery (Prague). He is represented by Polansky Gallery in Prague, which presented his work at the Liste Art Fair Basel and Vienna Contemporary in 2022. He has also participated in group exhibitions at Art Quarter Budapest, the Regional Gallery in Zlín, Galerie Klatovy/Klenová, MeetFactory (Prague), Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill (Vienna), Kunstverein Eisenstadt, Associazione Barriera (Turin), U10 Art Space (Bucharest), Holešovická šachta, and AM180 (Prague).