Pavel Forman: Transforman

The exhibition Transforman will present thirty of the latest works by the painter Pavel Forman from the years 2021-2024. The title of the exhibition can be understood as a play on words, referring of course to the artist’s name and at the same time to his favourite forms and approaches, which are in a sense “trans”, i.e. metamorphosing, transitional or mutating. With exaggeration and humour, the artist sees himself as a pop culture transformer, a machine that turns what is depicted in images, usually a human figure or animal, into a new visual reality. The term “trans” here thus does not refer to a state of excitement, an altered state of consciousness or gender, but rather suggests movement, change, and transformation. It also concerns the fact that what we usually see around us can be seen differently under certain circumstances.

Pavel Forman was born in 1977 in Bruntál, Silesia, where he also had his first painting studio. He played in a metal band and published poems. He graduated from the Faculty of Education at Palacký University in Olomouc and studied contemporary German literature and South Asian history at Humboldt University in Berlin. He graduated from the Universität der Künste in Berlin in 2006. He has lived in Denmark, Lithuania, and the USA, where he lectured at university and completed his dissertation. He currently works in his studio in Ostrava,  teaches at the University of Ostrava and is also co-founder of the Ostrava gallery GDM Contemporary. He has received several international awards and scholarships for his work. 

Curator: Tomáš Koudela