Josef Šmíd↓

About the work

The Verge

Besides oscillating between painting and graphic arts, Josef Šmíd examines the medium of video games. In recent years, he has mainly employed the combination of sprays and cut-out templates. His laborious but fleeting representations of landscape and human effort as well as vanity, viewed from isometric perspective, are mostly executed as murals. The need to accept the volatile and shortlived nature of his work took him to the subject of presence – discovery and extinction.

Moving on the edge of existence and nonexistence then became the subject of Šmíd’s diploma thesis. It is based on the idea of passing through the landscape of the human soul. The spectator turns into a player taking on the role of the painting on the wall, and guides the last visitor – a painter of tourist signs – through it. As the wall is repainted, it reveals the weary world and suppressed and forgotten layers in the marker’s footsteps. He follows the path of self-reflection and reconciliation, but also healing. The player, listening to a minimalist music, discovers a dreamy landscape inspired by the Czech-German borderland. The game is a digitized, animated and programmed version of a real mural from the West-Bohemian town of Krásno (formerly Schönfeld).