Jan Matýsek’s series of photographs explores the theme of collective touch and shared care for the invisible. We encounter three figures who are intently touching something that cannot be seen. 

The only part of the images in focus is their hands, clad in work gloves lined with fur on the inside. These aids, used in tantric massage, as well as the figures’ nudity, the phallic shape of the invisible object, but above all the very title of the series, open up space for erotic imagination. However, the phallus to which the title refers cannot be understood merely as the materialisation of the artist’s sexual desire. In Matýsek’s approach, it takes on cosmological qualities. It reflects an erotic relationship with the world: the principle of connection, penetration and reciprocity. Here, the phallic principle does not signify dominance, but rather generative power, passionate joy, the vitality of matter, playfulness and constant creation. The hand gestures evoke care, healing and integration – the process of a loving search for balance, both individual and cosmic. Love emerges here as a cognitive force. In the spirit of Sufi metaphor, it becomes the ‘astrolabe of divine mysteries’ and, through a transcendent touch, opens up a connection to a broader, non-human order – as that which dissolves the boundary between the visible and the invisible, between the knower and the known.

The exhibition is part of the Prague Pride Festival.

About the artists: Jan Matýsek is a visual artist and set designer. He primarily creates videos with an emphasis on evoking unconscious processes, whilst combining themes of transhumanism, ecology and corporeality with psychotherapeutic methods. He draws inspiration from practices of initiation and the illumination of the hidden. Matýsek studied scenography at Janáček Music Academy in Brno and undertook an internship at the UdK in Berlin in the experimental film studio. He completed his studies in the New Media 2 studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he currently works as an assistant.

Curator: Zuzana Štefková

The project is supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and the Municipality of Prague. Media partners of the project are Artmap and Radio 1. 

The co-organiser of the opening is the Foundation and Centre for Contemporary Art.