Filip Dvořák

Lives and works in Hejnice, Czechia

Artist statement

A gorge, chasm, or ravine is a very narrow and steep gulley, rift or fissure in the ground. A hole that never used to be there, and is now. That’s what our ravine is like. It’s chilly down here, with ferns. High up above the lip of the ravine, right there just below the starry sky are the tips and branches of trees from which food falls on our heads. Once upon a time one such a food-giver sprouted and grew and was assigned a custodian, a tree guardian. The role is hereditary, the guardian keeps watch, and our tree grows stronger over the years, in the middle of the ravine, ever taller. Beneath it we are born and die, with a song on our lips about how as early as next spring, or maybe next year, the tree branches will get so close to the ravine’s lip that it will take just one small leap. Just one small leap, to see it with our own eyes. To see the world and everything around. Not just a hole, but far-and-wide outspread ground. And then we, all of us, will get out of here. All around us, from all sides are cliffs, down which water runs all year round, too slippery to be climbed with even the sharpest claws. But some have tried, the squirrelly fools. Others have sought a way out downward, following where the water seeps away. Only one ever came back alive, and never spoke of it again. There were even those who tried to get caught and lifted out by a great bird of prey, but they ended up consumed. Yet some of us have completely forgotten who we used to be. They don’t even...

Artwork