Exhibition Jiří Petrbok: Patient's Diary with Artist and Curator

Jiří Petrbok's exhibition Patient's Diary explores the theme of self-portraiture and traces the artist's work from the 1990s to the present as a continuous record of a constantly shifting and questioned "self".

Self-portraiture here does not serve to confirm or stabilize identity - it becomes a space of transformation, masking, irony, and defense. In the images, the subject appears as a hybrid, a role, a sign, or a body exposed to the pressure of the surrounding world. The exhibition's title refers not only to illness but to the broader experience of a person subjected to the influence of institutions, social expectations, symbols, and their own body. The "patient" is one upon whom the world bears down, yet who keeps their own record so as not to become merely a case. Petrbok's visual diary connects pain, grotesque, humor, and anxiety, and across decades shows identity as a process - fragile, ambiguous, and never definitively closed.

The exhibition can also be visited on a guided tour with artist Jiří Petrbok and curator Otto M. Urban.