Katarzyna & Michalowska (diptych)

80% of the hammer price is allocated to support the non-profit foundation Spolu s odvahou, a member of the Bátor Tábor Family.

Søren Dahlgaard is a Danish conceptual artist whose work combines playfulness and humor with serious contemporary issues. He considers it crucial to actively involve the audience in shaping a work’s final form. Dahlgaard’s work often focuses on environmental issues, which is evident in his famous project Inflatable Islands. These inflatable tropical islands explore an illusory daydream of paradise, which in reality has been heavily impacted by mass tourism and climate change. His islands have been exhibited around the world, including at the 2013 Venice Biennale. Dahlgaard also works with performative photographic portraits that explore themes of identity and anonymity as well as artistic genres as such. These include the series Dough Portraits, in which he covers the heads of the sitters with leavened dough,and his Portrait Paintings, one of which is featured in this auction.The Portrait Paintings series contains a hidden subversive analysis of the medium of painting. A painting does not have to be done solely with a brush on canvas and physically displayed in that form. In Dahlgaard’s conception it is the result of a public performative action during which he covers the sitters’ heads with flowing paint without using a brush. The final form of the work then remains ambiguous. It consists of both the photographs of the sitters themselves and the performance that served as the basis for the portraits.