Curated selection

David Strauzz

The second look is part of the work

Some paintings work instantly. Others need time, movement, a change of angle — and sometimes even a phone screen. David Strauzz’s work belongs to the second group. At first glance it can seem raw: spray paint, mesh, industrial materials, layered surfaces and faces broken down into fragments. But as you move closer, the brutality begins to turn into fragility.

Strauzz stands with one foot in painting and the other in the object. He works with surface, light and optical effect in such a way that the work is never quite the same from one position to the next. At the same time, his paintings and objects raise the question of whether technology helps us see better, or instead teaches us to perceive the world only through a screen.

A powerful example is Ústupky — a work made from more than eight hundred spray-can caps. To the naked eye it reads as an abstract relief. Through a phone camera, however, a woman’s face appears. No app, no filter, no signal. All it takes is a different way of looking. This is where Strauzz is precise: he makes us check whether we were really looking.

His current exhibition FEEL MODE at Prime House Karlín develops this idea to the full. Strauzz rejects both the quick reading of an image and the need to explain everything at once. “Feel mode is a state in which you stop analysing everything and let your instincts and emotions take over,” he says. In his view, the best way into his work is neither a phone nor a filter, but time, patience and a change of distance and angle. He compares it to getting to know a person or a good wine: if you truly want to understand, a second is not enough. The exhibition therefore rests not only on visual impression, but on physical presence, material and the viewer’s willingness to slow down.

The exhibition is curated by Karin Svoboda of Vertex Group Development. Contemporary art has long been her passion, and she and David Strauzz share more than twenty years of friendship. She therefore follows his work not from a distance but over time – including its transformations, its experiments and the moments when the artist deliberately leaves behind what he has already mastered. Strauzz himself says that his paintings are “one hundred per cent a reaction to the world, our community and people” and that he paints stories of human experience. When a painting is not truthful or does not speak to him, he sprays over it in white without sentiment and starts again. It is precisely this uncompromising attitude towards his own work that is one of the reasons his art feels so personal and so contemporary. “It is incredible to follow David’s development over two decades and to see that his work ethic, his discipline and his need to push his own limits remain just as strong. Behind his energy lies enormous discipline, and behind his street idiom a surprising delicacy. Some paintings refuse to submit to reproduction – they have to be experienced in person,” says Karin Svoboda.

An important place in the long-term consistency of David’s work also belongs to his wife Bethany – a deeply wise, gentle and loyal woman who combines fragility with remarkable inner strength. Her stability and her ability to create a firm foundation and shared values are among those quiet but essential constants that make a long creative journey possible without the need to compromise with oneself.

Prime House Karlín proved to be a natural setting for FEEL MODE. The multifunctional space on Křižíkova Street brings together development, design and contemporary art; past exhibitions that met with a strong response here include that of Alžběta Jungrová, who worked with photography on unconventional materials and in large formats. FEEL MODE continues this line in a different language — more expressive, rawer, with an emphasis on material and optical illusion.

Exclusively, the original works are shown here alongside limited-edition posters that David Strauzz created by hand especially for this exhibition. These are not ordinary reproductions but collectible pieces in their own right, extending the world of FEEL MODE into a more accessible format.

For those who are only beginning to think of contemporary art as part of an interior or a first collection, Strauzz is interesting precisely because of his recognisability and his refusal to make a “product”. He says himself that a product is designed to be liked and to be reproducible; a work of art, in his view, works differently. His work always contains concrete personal stories and fragments, hidden layers and optical moments that do not reveal themselves straight away. If no one understands a work, he considers it his own failing; if everyone understands it instantly, that too, he believes, may be a failing. This is not art that tells you what to think. Rather, it makes you look a second time.

Three questions for David

1. When did you last destroy something that was “good” but not truthful?

David Strauzz: “Once a week. When a painting doesn’t speak to me, or I wouldn’t even hang it in my own home, I quickly paint over it with white spray. The message or aura of a painting has to be authentic.”

2. What happens at the moment you lose control during an experiment?

David Strauzz: “That is exactly where, and when, it starts to get interesting.”

3. Where, for you, is the line between art and product?

David Strauzz: “A product is designed to be liked and to be reproducible. A work of art is not.”

The curator’s invitation

“Come and get to know David through his work. Not through a reproduction, not through an algorithm, but in person. I have followed his work for twenty years and I am still fascinated by how he manages to be both consistent and constantly different. He has a discipline that is rare among artists, and yet he has remained exceptionally human. He talks with young people, listens to them, and at the same time shows them that real creative work is neither a quick reward nor instant dopamine. It is time, focus, doubt, work and the joy of moving forward. Experience FEEL MODE with us. I would be delighted if you came, lingered in front of the paintings a little longer than you are used to, and let them find you on their own.” — Karin Svoboda