(In Czech, the phrase for ‘to spend time’ literally means ‘to digest time.’)

Every time I encounter Jakub’s work, I find myself wondering how much time he actually asks of you – how much attention you’re willing to spare in order to read it. Because it’s layered, with a capital L. Layered to the point where you begin to feel the weight of those layers, their accumulation, their resistance. And it’s not just that he thrives on assigning meaning to every particle of it- from dust to the dawn of the material – but that the atmosphere itself, the saturation of the material world, becomes the very point of departure.

For a long time, this density in his work was bound to the question of human interference within the digital – a kind of gameplay logic, where each decision carried the trace of your online footprint. The works unfolded like an algorithm of choice and consequence, poetic in their systemization. Yet, in the more recent pieces, Jakub seems to be tracing other genealogies. Something more rooted, perhaps – a return to rural legacies that have quietly structured his way of assembling things all along. There’s an echo here of Stano Filko’s vast, systemized cosmology, an ideological and formal layering that speaks not only of permanence but of the convergence of what is “latest” and what is “initial.”

The exhibition centers on three main objects. They appear as three bodies – meaning body/heads – that seem to guard the space, enclosing it, watching over it. Their presence suggests that movement, even in its smallest form, is never accidental; it unfolds within the logic of a system that precedes and defines it. Aesthetically, this construct emerges through faint recollections of digital environments – artificial terrains where control, observation, and immersion become indistinguishable.

In Jakub’s work, these terrains are not virtual but visceral. On top of everything, the space is filled with chestnuts, probably one of the most significant symbols of this area. It’s a bit late in the season, though, so it’s again a stage of slight decay that kind of drives your choreography through the show, making a connection with the lower parts of the works, where you can see different kinds of old food materials glued to the surface or lying underneath. it’s all kinda pre-digested for you. Like with everything, the decision has already been made, while you were gone.

— Adam Vít