Krištof Kintera (*1973) is a sculptor, performer, illustrator, and curator. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he studied under Jiří Lindovský, Aleš Veselý, Michael Bielický, and Milan Knížák, and continued his postgraduate studies at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. He has presented his work at prestigious domestic and international exhibitions, including at the Tinguely Museum in Basel, the Kunsthal Rotterdam, the DOX Center for Contemporary Art, and Prague’s Rudolfinum Gallery for his second major Czech exhibition, Nervous Trees (2017). He was one of the founders of what is now the NoD Experimental Gallery Space and later became the gallery’s first curator.
In his work, he combines visual art with performance and theatrical scenography, using technically sophisticated, mechanical, or kinetic objects to explore and critically reflect on a consumerist, globalized, and overly technologized society. Using diverse materials and found objects, he creates striking and monumental installations that blend playfulness with existential gravity and, in a certain way, prompt the viewer to reflect on modern civilization.
The exhibition Signal V presents one of the key works from Kintera’s early career, titled Plumbař. This complex installation was created gradually between 1995 and 1998. The work depicts a fictitiously real being enclosed in a lead shell and surrounded by lead objects. The installation requires visitors to actively explore it from the moment they enter the gallery. At first glance, the installation appears to be a stark, isolated bunker situated in the corner of the room. Only after stepping inside does the aforementioned being—enclosed in a lead shell and surrounded by lead objects, reveal itself to the viewer. The walls, floor, ceiling, and everyday objects are all made of lead. Here, the artist develops a fictional narrative about an isolated world in which everything this figure touches is irreversibly transformed into a heavy and toxic metal.
However, the Plumbař did not remain hidden in his dwelling. As part of the performance, he moved through the streets of Prague and on public transportation wearing a lead suit, observing the daily hustle and bustle of society through lead glasses, while he himself became a conspicuous and hard-to-categorize element of everyday life. His gait was slow and laborious due to the weight of the material. The artist’s documentation and video footage of these urban interventions are subsequently shown on a television set located directly within the artist’s lead-lined interior. The performance thus becomes an integral part of the installation.
In this work, Kintera masterfully combines performance with an architectural object, deconstructs the boundaries between private and public space, and, through the metaphor of leaden isolation and the gradual discovery of details, offers the viewer a powerful experience of human vulnerability and loneliness in the modern world.
Visitors to the Telegraph were first introduced to Kintera’s work back in 2021, when his work was featured in the exhibition Signal II where his work Talkman was presented. It was a kinetic figure, roughly the height of a child, that moves and recites pre-recorded, often unsettling questions and monologues. In 2023, his electromechanical object Bad News, in which a devil drums to the sound of a continuous stream of catastrophic news, was exhibited. Two years later, the work MY (PERSONAL) PLANET IS VERY GOOD appeared in th. Two years later, the work MY (PERSONAL) PLANET IS VERY GOOD appeared in the photographic series Dough Portraits at the exhibition Game Owner, where collector Karel Goláň posed with it in front of Søren Dahlgaard’s camera.
Each of these encounters has revealed a different facet of Kintera’s work; this time, he returns to its origins.
The exhibition Signal V will run through September 24, 2026.
