The Game of Time

Petr Nikl (*1960) is an intermedia artist with roots in fine and applied arts. His work is as confident and compelling when expressed through the means of traditional fine art techniques as when it takes the forms of artist books, interactive projects, and performance-based improvised actions, theatre and music performances.

His ability tofreely combine all of the different manifestations and techniques and to develop them further through the use of the principles of play, which the artist perceives as a creative means for understanding the world, is remarkable and groundbreaking. Petr Nikl is not an artist of grand and exalted gestures but rather one with an unbridled imagination. His art is initiatory to such a degree that it allows the viewer to forget everyday reality and makes it possible to resist the passage of time at least through a temporary return to a place where things still had a different meaning, where a stick was a horse and a boat, and the end of the day was ushered in by a bedtime story. The phenomenon of time, one of Nikl’s most significant themes, also plays the key rolein this book.