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www.privateairny.com Private Air | Winter 2023/2024 53 J H: Can you take us back to your early days in the Prague underground graffiti and street art scene? What inspired you to venture into this form of artistic expression? JK: e Communist regime fell down in 1989 right after the Berlin wall went down and from there, all the influences from the western world began to appear. First, McDonald's restaurants opened in Prague and the first writing (graffiti) by German and French tourists appeared throughout the city. I was a young teenager at that time and these mysterious wall paintings attracted me so much. From the first moment I saw them, I knew I had to do it and wanted to learn all about it. My source of information was recorded MTV broadcasts on video tapes. It took a few years until I met the right guys and we established our crew. e name "Cakes" and your crew, e DSK, are synonymous with the vibrant Prague Street art movement. Could you share a memorable anecdote from those energetic and creative days on the city streets and train yards? e second half of the 90's was the golden era of Czech graffiti while the first half it was all new and fresh in society. I remember in 1994 when I painted my first panel on a Prague subway in an outside layup and there was a path next to it. When someone would pass by, one of our crew would whistle, so we wouldn't get caught and we would hide under the train cars. After we finished that piece, we went to the subway station to take the ride back home and on the way there, a man joined us telling us he saw everything and he was like - "cool guys!" He introduced himself as the subway driver and gave us some tips on where to paint the cars next. Your artistic journey has evolved significantly, moving from graffiti to 3-D graffiti, light suspended installations, NF Ts, paintings, and sculptures. How did this transition unfold, and what drove you to explore these diverse mediums? e medium and style of my art has always been a reflection of where it is placed and over time, these places changed based on my interests and intentions. When I was teenager, I wanted to paint on all the walls around the world, then this evolved, and I wanted to be able to do graffiti without needing a wall, so I started on 3D graffiti sculpture. From here, next was paintings in gallery spaces, then I went on to digital spaces, and so forth. I feel like with every new perspective, I discover different ways to change my expressions and the work usually evolves by using a technique I haven't done before. It's also constant curiosity and exploring. Exhibiting in renowned galleries across the globe—from New York to Shanghai—is an impressive accomplishment. How do you adapt your work to resonate with different cultural audiences while maintaining your artistic integrity? I'm always trying to change the concepts of new exhibitions to evolve my work and it is, of course, challenging. I don't think it works if I try to modify my art for different audiences since then, it would be based on my own ideas about them. I believe that my mind has to work universally, so that my art speaks to an international audience worldwide and my focus is on the particular work in that particular space. Any audience can distinguish between bad, good, and great art. THE COLLECTION CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: 2004 Flaming Point, Palachovo nam Praha; 2021 Zone of Mystery, Orleans; 2014 Deep Black, Church_str NYC; 2019 Amorfoid, Fibreglass Resin, Concentration Bluerider, Taipei. Photos: Jan Kalab studio

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