START POINT PRIZE – Prize for emerging artists

In his thesis project, Patrik Kriššák returns to a theme focused on representation and the media of painting. It is no longer a great struggle to create the “last picture” full of pathos but rather small studies in a low-tech punk manner which play with the representational space using materials which are used to define and relativize the paintings, which are often made up of simple or banal themes and compositions. It is the basic media and technologies that become the theme which is not needlessly monumentalized. The relationship of classical genres to new media is expressed through the primitive use of technology in the representational space, such as lit diodes. Resin is a material which is often used in conservation techniques. The artist uses it to show a contrast with the use of technology, for fixing objects on the surface of the picture or completely on its own (resin applied on the back of the gessoed canvas). When the artist works on a larger scale he uses minimalistic or banal motifs, the structural layering increases with the smaller picture–objects, thus creating a less marked transition from the second dimension to the third. (lg)