Thin Skin

Aerialist Eliška Brtnická has long pursued artistic research in contemporary circus. She explores what a trapeze is, what forms it can take, how this reflects in body movement, and what this movement conveys to the audience. Her work is distinctly visual, which is why this new project is presented in a gallery context. In Thin Skin, created with Alžběta Tichá and Filip Zahradnický, she treats the trapeze as a kinetic and action sculpture - deconstructing it, radically changing its parameters, with a long thin iron rod as the main protagonist.

"We are fascinated by how this material behaves; the movement of the suspended rod almost hypnotizes us. Certain movements can irreversibly affect the shape of the trapeze and create new conditions of instability that we must adapt to. We grapple with fragility and vulnerability that can only be felt through thin skin."

Thin Skin is a meditative movement installation - a world as a graphic model, a landscape of lines. Metal rods interweave in space with the bodies of performers who sensitively receive the physical responses of the material, their partner. Moving sculptures appear and disappear; their archetypal structures can be clothed in meaning or simply allowed to flow. The body imprints itself in matter, the image in the mind, time bends. This "intuitive physics" demonstrates the most basic principles of existence in the earth's gravitational field.