Petr Jakšík: just sp_ace - invitation to the exhibition at Gallery XY

Petr Jakšík

Petr Jakšík was born in Zlín and grew up in Ústí nad Labem. He is a graduate of the Faculty of Architecture at the Brno University of Technology. He also spent a year in Valencia, Spain during a study internship at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura. He gained experience at international architectural firms Sogo arquitectos, in and out arquitectos, the studio of Tomáš Pejpek, and C+HOaR. In Brno, he founded his own practice, but soon moved to the Prague studio A8000, where he still works as a senior architect. Under the brand JAKSIK+, he occasionally (un)teaches children architecture, designs stage settings, and comments on current events in the field. He participates in and co-organizes workshops focused on the role of architecture in society. This year, he was part of the team representing the Czech Republic at the international showcase of theatrical space and scenography PQ 2019. Among the completed projects, the interior design of the Banderi apartment in Warsaw, the startup Starcube, the Asahi restaurant in Brno, scenography for Divadlo na cucky, or the design and execution of the bar at the theater on Wurmova 7 can be mentioned.
The exhibition just sp_ce is divided into 3 parts, with a common theme of space and working with it. The first part manifests the thematic starting point of the entire exhibition with one model. The second is a presentation of pedagogical practice that deals with mediating space and its complexity to children, while the third part turns to the intimate environment of the installation of domestic objects.

Gallery XY: Manifest of the Value of Space
The contemporary world of the post-factual era, based on visual shortcut information, is heading towards emptiness, degradation of values, and a superficial perception with a diminishing ability to analyze the essence of the world, which we ultimately care about less and less. We gradually lose the ability to experience and seek digital confirmations on the screen. We travel and learn on the display instead of through real experiences and personal encounters. The website archdaily.com acts as our passport. We are becoming producers of jpgs. Instagram and Pinterest culture is driving towards repeating established half-truths that replace personal opinions and creativity. Images without content. The photographs of the Spomeniks in the Balkans are viewed as beautiful concrete statues without any understanding of the context of their creation. Also in architecture, buildings increasingly become a photo without the need to understand the qualities of inner space. Sigfried Giedion, the Swiss architectural historian, identified the current state decades ago when he wrote “... architecture is treated in the same way as playboys treat life, skipping from perception to perception and quickly succumbing to boredom.” Entertainment architecture distracts but does not fulfill. The model of a fictitious house with six identical rooms deliberately works with equal importance and value of the space in the bathroom as in the living room. The value of every space in architecture merits thorough work with it. Space deserves to be composed rather than merely filled to meet normative requirements.

Gallery XY-1 (vault): Pedagogical Exhibition
This part showcases the works of students from the 3rd grade of the Lvíčata primary school at ČVUT in Prague. It demonstrates their unique and societally unburdened perception of space and their effort to grasp and understand it. Petr Jakšík focuses in his courses for children on developing their individual creativity, which is not egotistical, but rather capable of entering into mutual communication with others and fostering collaboration. Prescriptive and stereotypical rules are put aside so that imagination, free creation, experimentation, and children's critical thinking can develop fully. Only then is it possible to freely approach matter, space, and other basic elements of architecture that enable them a generous, open, and joyful view of the world around them.
“Lvíčata” received a brief theoretical introduction, but then independently sought the relationship between the external appearance of buildings and their interiors. The children searched for answers to what architecture is to them, which surrounds them at every step, without them being explicitly aware of it. During the workshop, they first used a scale to seek proportional spaces, which led to the selection of their own theme. Finally, they were able to physically touch the concept of abstract space in a negative modeled from clay, which served as a mold for a plaster cast. They had a unique opportunity to knead a space that is otherwise intangible and difficult for them to understand between their fingers.

Gallery XY-1 (hallway): Domesticated Installation
The installation arose as a natural outcome of the position of objects in the household. They transformed from mere objects into space-creating elements. The author in the installation deals with the themes of fluidity and uncertainty of space, thereby commenting on the observation by Spanish historian and curator Beatriz Colomina about the ambiguity of an individual's presence in the moment of digital communication. That is, where does an individual's mind actually reside when in contact with a person physically present in another part of the planet? Another inspirational theme was the definition of space by Albert Einstein, who, thanks to relativistic physics, called into question the right angles, orthogonality of the universe, and its independence from content. Einstein's space is therefore not an empty scaffolding that does not depend on intangible bodies but rather deforms variously with their presence. The installation is one of the author's responses to what the abstract concept of space means for him and whether the concept remains relevant and important in society.
Thanks to Gallery XY and DNC for enabling the exhibition and assistance in its realization. Special thanks to Eva Macharáčková for the care and provision of support during the residency, to design studio Bechynsky for ensuring 3D printing, and to Petra Jansa for text corrections.

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