What is the weight of a single love?
And how much can one body encompass?
Classical sculpture, from its inception, has been entwined with the human form and the essence of animal instinct. These creations possess and almost mystical aura, harboring the fervent narratives that underlie our civilization’s culture. These are tales steeped in pathos, narratives conveyed through lofty, impassioned discourse, marked by excited states of mind and profound emotional resonance.
How much sorrow can a single back bear, and how many tears can one eye shed?
In their exhibition Three Bodies, Six Legs, Six Hands, Tereza Štětinová and Martin Žák breathe life into the quintessential sculptural mediums of stone, bronze, and plaster. They embody genre figures such as Heracles, Melpomene, and Salome, whose physicality has, with the passage of time, become a shared heritage. These figures stand ready to refer to their myriad previous incarnations and the intense experiences embedded in their life stories—a part of our collective memory, entwined with love, passion, and grief.
While Martin’s figures, rendered with expressive realism, are wholly dedicated to the human form, Tereza’s highly stylized creations, evocative of votive objects or primitive carvings, infuse the space with animalistic and fetishistic elements.
Thus, the exhibition presents the fundamental human experience of love in all its manifestations, spanning from the romantic and platonic, the physical and passionate, to the very edges of fetishistic devotion.
Curator: Klára Vavříková