V znamení pentódy - všetko je tak, ako to v skutočnosti je

The authors Pavol Čejka, Jan Čumlivski, and Tomáš Klepoch worked on this large-scale graphic for three years across various locations. It first emerged in Klepoch's studio in Banská Štiavnica – "I called the guys to get together for a carve. We smoked, read, sat on the floor, and took turns at engraving." Within individual areas of the picture, they complemented, overlapped, and commented on each other. They found the old lino that formed a base for the graphics in a landfill.

The main motif of the work draws upon historical events, cultural history, conspiracy theories, and dialogue with graphic, literary, and philosophical traditions. Impetus for its creation was a proliferation of conspiracy theories in the area of Banská Štiavnica. A mystification was thereby created – the Fellowship of the Pentode, an order that controls the world from afar. "When we found the detective book The Sign of the Pentode in a local antiquarian bookshop, we were unsurprised and took it as confirmation of a path well taken."

From the completed engraving, the authors have created a series of unique books which are a precise 1:1 scale map of the work. The publication In the Name of the Pentode (V znamení pentódy) achieved first place in the bibliophilia category in the Most Beautiful Czech Books 2018 competition. It is included in the collections of the Museum of Czech Literature in Prague and is available at the SNG Ex Libris bookshop. In the book, we read that "not everything is as it seems. There are visible forces in the world, but there are also invisible ones. The ability to read the signs and understand the connections is an essential prerequisite to understanding reality."

Pentode, as the work is nicknamed, has become part of the SNG project Art in the Public Space. Fusion of art and architecture. The long-term display of a work on paper is "museum punk". It was a conservation challenge, and despite the satisfactory conditions that we created, the print will need to "rest" in the dark from time to time.

Alexandra Kusá ● Text from the leaflet for the work in the Slovak National Gallery