wood, rope, metal, textile (object), 40 × 40.3 × 4 cm
purchased in 2021 with funding from the Czech Ministry of Culture
This work belongs to the cycle Banalities, which reflects Tóth’s shift away from painting and into the domain of post-conceptual art. In his own words, the value of the cycle “lies in the fact that I took my possibility to be an author and tore it into fragments, which somebody else used to compose the image of a poet”. Footprints are a characteristic feature of Tóth’s work; he works with them on a number of levels, such as painting footprints on an asphalt road (Grass / Darkness, 1976) or creating and recording footprints in snow, using specially modified soles bearing the negative of a bird’s footprint (Footprints, 1979). Viewed conceptually, behind the footprints we can discern motion, processuality and a reference to a person engaging in a dialogue with the landscape; this reflects not only Tóth’s own thought processes as an action artist, but also the contemporary art scene as a whole.