Vernisáž / Opening: Jiří Petrbok: Deník pacienta

DOX Center for Contemporary Art invites you to the opening of the exhibition Jiří Petrbok: Patient’s Diary, which will take place on April 23, 2026.

Jiří Petrbok’s exhibition Patient’s Diary will focus on the theme of the self-portrait and present the artist’s work from the 1990s to the present as a continuous record of a changing, constantly questioned “self.”

The exhibition will trace how this principle manifests itself across different periods of the artist’s work: from early paintings of physical and existential transformation, through motifs of masks, protective suits, and fragmented figures, to works in which family, institutions, public space, and language increasingly enter the self-portrait. Petrbok’s work, however, does not speak of a “true self” that could be revealed once and for all. Rather, it presents identity as a fluid set of roles, defense mechanisms, gestures, and reactions, shaped by the pressures of the environment and inner experience. The Patient’s Diary is thus not an intimate confession in the traditional sense, but an urgent portrait of a person who, in the space between vulnerability and self-irony, attempts to maintain his own coherence.