Family Table

The Family Table is a print alluding to the essential drama of human relationships. Jiří Balcar depicts a group of anonymized figures that fail to find an animate interrelationship with their surrounding envirnoment. The scene is set in a spacious interior that enhances the feeling of circumstantial atemporality. Incorporated into the distinctive compositional layout are isolated letters that have their own formal specificities with respect to the picture space. Both the pictorial and written components attest to the artist’s knowledge of American Pop-Art, which, however, assumed different meanings in the context of his artwork. Faithful to European tradition, Balcar transposes elements of foreign serigraphies into the muted tones of classical printmaking techniques. Through these means, he thematizes the malfunction of human communication and the melancholic feelings of a lack of fulfilment ensuing from these experiences.