Linserka | Porušené signály. Antivideoart. | Pavel Kopřiva

Pavel Kopřiva is one of the leading figures of Czech intermedia art. In his work, he has long combined objects, installations, light, sound, and digital technologies, focusing on the relationships between humans, technology, and the changing nature of perception. Alongside his artistic practice, he is also deeply engaged in education.

Since 2007, he has headed the Studio of Interactive Media at the Faculty of Art and Design of the Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, where he and his students develop experimental approaches to new media, interactive art, and technology-based creative practices.

For many years, he served as the director of the Secondary School of Glassmaking in Kamenický Šenov, the oldest glassmaking school in Central Europe. He has long contributed to the development of education in the fields of art, design, and glassmaking.

His work naturally bridges the world of contemporary art with the tradition of North Bohemian glassmaking, an integral part of the region’s cultural identity.

Broken Signals: Anti-Video Art, an exhibition at the Linserka Cultural and Creative Centre, presents a series of objects and reliefs created from television screens, electronic components, and fragments of technology. The artist works with the motif of disrupted communication and the transformation of meaning in an era when digital imagery permeates everyday reality.

Into the surfaces of the screens, he engraves fictional messages and traces of unknown communications whose origin and meaning remain unclear. Kopřiva’s work oscillates between an archaeology of the future and a critique of technological dependence. Remnants of devices that once served to transmit information are transformed into artifacts of a world whose communication systems have failed.

At the same time, the artist abandons the medium of the moving image itself and replaces it with a physical intervention into the material—a carved trace that he describes as “anti-video art.” The installation raises questions about the relationship between technology, memory, and materiality, while offering visitors an opportunity to view familiar electronic materials from a new perspective.