Page 26 - Masters

dANIEL PEšTA

Lives and works in Prague, Czech Republic and Frankfurt, germany

gALLERY REPRESENTED ARTIST www.galeriemontanelli.com / www.nadacedrak.com

And we never even noticed : Daniel Pešta’s
assemblages, sculptures, and canvases take us
into a world of absurdity, a realm between the
conscious and the unconscious where we are often
confronted with profound and primal truths. On
closer examination it becomes clear that Pešta’s
sources of inspiration are to be found not primarily
in external experience, through his intensity of
vision and observation of the complexities of our
ever-changing world, but also, and particularly, in
his profound inner emotional response. ‘What we
call the conscious need not be defined; it is the self-
same thing as the consciousness of philosophers
and popular opinion /knowledge (consciousness =
Bewusstsein = knowledge of being). Everything else
is for us the unconscious. We are soon led to make
an important division in this unconscious. Some
processes become conscious easily; they may then
cease to be conscious, but can become conscious
once more without any trouble: as people say, they
can be reproduced or recalled. This reminds us that
consciousness is in general an extremely fugitive
condition. What is conscious is conscious only for a
fleeting moment.’ This passage from Sigmund Freud’s
essay On the Unconscious, in which he distinguishes
between the conscious and the unconscious mind,
seems to me to have a direct bearing on the work
of Daniel Pešta. His paintings and sculptures are
characterised by a formal language that is both
symbolic and metaphoric, frequently hinting at inner
states common to us all, including unconscious
or traumatic states. When Daniel Pešta says: ‘My
biggest problem is that I am forever dreaming. I have
to bring myself artificially to a state of wakefulness,
but I can’t keep that up for long’, we can take his
words – subjective though they are – as an abstract
pointer to an existential content present in many of
his works.
The series entitled ‘Gardens of Paradise’ includes
both works on paper and assemblages, mostly in
the form of diptychs. One depicts two pink children’s
frocks, the colour suggesting the innocence typically

 WINDOW, 2005 MIxED MEDIA 29x25 IN. / 75x65 CM.
WHIsPers 2, 2005 MIxED MEDIA Ø 20 IN. / Ø 50 CM. 
WOLF’s Nest, 2005, MIxED MEDIA Ø 11 IN. / Ø 30 CM. 
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masters of today