Catalogue for Jiří Petrbok’s exhibition Patient Diary

The catalogue for Jiří Petrbok’s exhibition Patient Diary maps the artist’s work from the 1990s up to the present, highlighting his long-term interest in the theme of self-portraiture. In the painter’s work, the patient is not just someone who is suffering but someone who keeps a record – someone who knows that identity is not fixed once and for all but rather that it is constantly being created from the body, from roles, from masks, from objects, from inscriptions, from social symbols that sometimes protect a person and at other times suffocate them. Instead, it offers faithfulness to what is often overlooked: transformations, defense strategies, awkwardness and anger, irony and anxiety. And, above all, it is faithful to the idea that being a subject means being in motion. Petrbok’s self-portraiture is thus highly contemporary. The catalogue was produced in collaboration with the Black Peaks publishing house, with graphic design by 20YY (Petr Bosák, Robert Jansa).