from the series I Don’t Paint, fomaspeed variant photographic enlargement, 650 × 1025 mm
purchased 2018 with the support of the Czech Ministry of Culture
This photograph represents one of the typical facets of Michal Kalhous’s work. The composition is an everyday still life which immediately captures the state of things which speak for themselves, without the need for any additional stylization. Again humans are present here a priori, in the background of the rational still life. Alongside its calm quietness, this still life can also be read as signifying a certain tension, reflecting a degree of inconclusiveness; the bread roll has been left partly uneaten, the lid has not been replaced. A process has been halted, suspended, disrupted, and we can only speculate why. This conceptualized openness, tension, dialogicity, and depiction of everyday reality again offers a clear illustration of how Czech artistic photography shifted its focus at the turn of the 21th century – and it is right that this shift should be illustrated in institutional collections.