I am a dark room

Room-sized multimedia performance, 2022
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9:16 screen / colour / surround 7.1 / a sitting stool / 20:00 minutes
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This self-portrait is a study of sincere image composition, containing one's own body as a living sculpture. Karel places a frame around his own body and its interior space. His physical body, which is only a form, sometimes manifests itself merely in its essential formlessness. Landscapes appear within ourselves that disappear the moment we try to name or visualise them.

Making the twilight zone between image and non-image experienceable is Karel's quest. By relating body, image and sound, in a room-sized multimedia performance that the visitor visits individually, a space of imagination is created through which his physically intimate inner world can unfold.

Karel sees his self-portrait as an exercise in authentic introspection. He uses it as an instrument to search for the interspace, between disciplines, between his own image and his inner world. How can you take distance from your body, looking at it objectively (as a maker), whilst simultaneously experiencing that same body subjectively (from within)? Where is the image of oneself formed; inwardly, in the created image or in the viewer? Where exactly does a self-portrait arise; does it show what it hides, or does it hide what it wants to show? As a maker, he places himself as a human being abiding by the laws of his own practice. The only way to embody the innate essence of himself in his work is a process of letting go of personal resistance, control and fear. This body idea of ​​surrender and the search for emotional availability, in relation to one's own working method as a maker, is perhaps the only way to honestly look at oneself as a human being, through the lens of one's own artistry.