Vojtěch Skácel

Vojtěch Skácel (b. 1983, Zlín) is a graduate of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology, where he completed his master’s degree in the Environment Studio in 2011. Since 2012 he has been the founder and curator of Galerie Garáž (GAG) in Zlín, and from 2018 to 2020 he ran Galerie Komnata in Zlín together with Tomáš Krejčí.

Vojtěch Skácel’s work spans a wide range of media, from classical painting and sculpture to installations, projections, land art, site-specific work, and performance. His work is marked by a certain kind of uncompromising art; he sees a place for his “art” practically everywhere around us and does not create exclusively for the gallery setting. In short, he explores the tension between the human environment—urban and rural alike—and nature, drawing attention to situations that most of us consider “normal.” After his action, intervention, documentation, or transfer of reality onto canvas, wall, or architecture, however, our awareness of how things have changed deepens. He summarizes his activities under the name “Green Studio,” in which greenery plays the leading role. Nature thus becomes an open and infinite studio; wood, branches, and stumps are not only a source of inspiration but also the material itself. He understands nature as culture; the primeval forest is a work of art. On the other hand, he does not shy away from combining natural elements with purely technical media such as asphalt and roofing felt. Another very interesting aspect of Skácel’s work is its characteristic artistic poetry, which manifests itself ironically and through verbal paraphrases in texts, inscriptions, and words.