Household Items

Adam Žufníček’s exhibition takes its title from the experimental project Household Objects by Pink Floyd. In the 1970s, the musicians searched for new sonic possibilities in their immediate surroundings, and in this never-released project they replaced traditional musical instruments with ordinary household items. Similarly, Žufníček turns his attention to everyday objects, placing his assemblage works on top of wooden brooms. Brooms appeal to him because of their ambiguity – they are indispensable yet overlooked tools, serving the maintenance of our homes. At the same time, they were considered attributes of witches, who could use them to achieve escape. Through their verticality, brooms also refer to the human figure, but instead of a head, the artist places intricate assemblages with a highly specific aesthetic at the intersection of the organic, the technical, and the magical. These complex mechanisms of unclear purpose may resemble scientific diagrams or artifacts of unknown civilizations, created through laborious and concentrated shaping of natural, artificial, and waste materials with an almost obsessive attention to detail. Various sculptural situations unfold around a central object with a wasp nest, whose title refers to the concept of shared consciousness. Žufníček likens the almost permanent connection of our minds to the endless stream of information and sensations in the virtual environment to a shared hallucination, a psychedelic experience full of dynamic movement. And it is precisely whirling motion that becomes a key principle in his installation, appearing on both a formal and a thematic level. The swirling of dust under the broom’s bristles transforms, on the opposite end of the handle, into sculptural situations that seem to rotate around a central axis. Motifs such as a fusion reactor, the movement of electrons in an atomic nucleus, or the orbits of planets are often linked with nonhuman agents. Small creatures become drivers or initiators of strange processes, raising the question of how the complexity of our reality might appear to nonhuman beings. Adam Žufníček (born 1999) is among the most distinctive Czech artists of the emerging generation. His work interweaves inspirations from the visuality of genre subcultures, sci-fi, fantasy, graffiti, DIY practices, and ordinary pop-cultural objects. With extraordinary attention to detail – a trait revealing his initial training in painting – he combines found, natural, artificial, and waste materials. His approach resonates with the “aesthetics of strangeness” of the Šmidra group, particularly Bedřich Dlouhý. In 2025 he graduated from the Studio of Fine Arts III at UMPRUM in Prague, having previously completed his bachelor’s studies in the Painting III Studio at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Brno University of Technology. He undertook study residencies at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and in the Video Studio at FaVU BUT in Brno, and briefly studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He has been exhibiting solo since 2021, with his works presented for instance at the Gallery at Bethlehem Chapel and at Studio Prám in Prague, at Zaazrak Dornych Gallery and the House of the Lords of Kunštát in Brno, and at PAF Gallery in Olomouc.