"I stretched the strings and connected the yard - this is quite common. But I used it as a funicular for my light puppets. It was fifty meters, puppets were playing, at the end there were wooden resonators and guitar pins which I used for tuning. The resonators emitted a distorted tone in waves which sounded in the corridors. It was connecting with the entire ambits, through a circulation of sound. And I enjoyed making this tone which responded - the wave - as if inside the belly of an instrument, perhaps a violoncello."

Petr Nikl, 2002

Performed in collaboration with Igor Hlavinka and Michael Delia (music).

Petr Nikl (born 1960) is a Czech artist who has been active on the scene since the 1980s. His creative activities have always transcended his personality of a painter, as he is active as an actor, singer, puppeteer, writer, publisher and performer. In the beginning of the 1990s, he was a member of the Tvrdohlaví (Hard-Headed) group. He is a founder of the theatre ensemble Medehaha, he was the curator of the collective exhibition Nests of Games in Prague’s Rudolfinum Gallery in 2000. Nikl represented the Czech Republic at EXPO 2005 in Aichi, Japan. Often returning to the world of childhood, Nikl’s paintings depict a confrontation of innocence and the discovery of identity, representing a parable of a world which was forced to stop working under utopian visions and enter a stage of adulthood. Even the form of his paintings dwells on the stage of innocence, while their perfect aesthetic retain the promise of a peculiar secret.

Education: 1981-1987 - Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, 2004 - École supérieure des beaux-arts, Marseille, France.

Petr Nikl: Puppets