The Power of the Face - Jiří David
The exhibition will take place in the Castle Riding Hall in Hluboká nad Vltavou from 8 June to 12 October 2025.
The cycle of Jiří David's paintings entitled The Power of the Face does not present specific faces, portraits of people as the artist has worked with them before (the photographic cycles Hidden Forms or Without Compassion). These are more than a hundred magical faces, reminiscent of the terrifying masks that began to emerge insistently and unstoppably from the artist's unconscious at the beginning of 2023. They may remind us of shamanic or funeral masks, demons, phantoms, ghosts haunting our dreams.
Current public space is flooded with faces that often resemble empty masks. This has triggered the need for some artists to hide their faces. Not so with Jiri David. His black-and-white terrifying faces engulf and hypnotise us with their eyes (sometimes only one, sometimes they have more) and we, like petrified after looking into the face of the terrible mythical Medusa, cannot tear ourselves away from them.
The faces of Jiří David are silent. Indeed, in today's noisy environment, clogged with the clamour of the media, political squabbles and debased entertainment, no one would even hear them. There is no music at this carnival. Hundreds of silent faces stare silently at us, creating a rather frightening picture of today's often hypocritical society.
