Matěj Smetana's work in a variety of media — including objects, installations and animations — frequently concerns physical laws and the viability of things and ideas.

 

His recent work focuses on connections between film and animation techniques, and specific domains of human activity. He is interested in the act of transcription between media — in the creation and effect of symbol — and in the blurred border between human activity and an artwork.

 

Smetana was born in 1980. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno with doctoral studies at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts and is currently assistant professor at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno.

 

In 2014 Matěj Smetana was a finalist in the Oskar Čepan prize for young artists. He has exhibited extensively.

 

In some of its aspects the art of Matěj Smetana resembles scientific discoveries. It is similarly persistent, it loves exactness, it applies known patterns under conditions that no one has tested yet, it wants to look at what no one has seen before." Lenka Vítková