Category
Pavel Baňka“Knife”
By Pavel Baňka
Pavel Baňka’s artwork explores the medium of photography in an unusually wide range: from documentary, portraits, and family portraits, to figurative and performative work. Writing on Baňka’s work, Anne Wilkes Tucker, Curator Emerita of Photography, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, remarked, “There is no pretense that the photographer has documented found realities. Clearly invented and staged, the pictures visualize dreams, or literary illusions… as Baňka wanted to be a writer before he was a photographer, his empathy for fiction and poetic imagery is not surprising.” His “kitchen rituals transcend the frontier of the domestic environment and the actors in the leading roles enter the stage of public life: the demarcation line of interior and exterior space is wiped away, and with it the meaning of the world of objects multiplies – a knife is at once a kitchen instrument, a weapon, a mirror, a fetish…”