Evžen Šimera

Finalista Ceny Jindřicha Chalupeckého 2008

“By applying drops of paint and letting them run down the canvas, Evžen Šimera has achieved unusual results, replacing traditional painting methods. This technological innovation allows him to explore the image and its limits. He looks for points of contact between painting and object, authorship and circumstance, minimalism and design.” (Jury statement)

After studying at the Painting Studio under Vladimír Skrepl at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Evžen Šimera (born 1980) completed a one-year internship at Middlesex University in London and then a PhD program at the Academy of Arts and Design in Prague. In his painting and object work Šimera develops his own technique called new dripping. He consciously refers to Jackson Pollock, but unlike Pollock, he works by placing a drop of paint on the top frame of a painting or the edge of an object and letting it drip down freely. In his drip paintings, the human psyche and its expression no longer play a role, but only gravity and chance. He has also collaborated with other artists on a number of conceptual actions exploring the possibilities and limits of interpersonal communication, such as I Take It Personally (2005), Lesson (2003) and We Are No Longer Fags (2003). In 2009, Evžen Šimera received the Critics' Prize for Young Painting in 2009, and in 2012 co-founded the Scholastika Higher Vocational School of Visual Communication with artist Ondřej Brody.