Circle With Many Centers 2026, Riviéry - GHMP Prague (Trojský Zámek)
Jakub Choma’s "signpost" works disrupt navigation systems, exposing them a symbols of control and compelling us to question reality, simulation, and agency within late capitalism. These works examine systems of orientation and wayfinding in both the physical and digital realms—ranging from wooden hiking trail markers in nature to urban neon signs and corporate office regulations. While such signs conventionally offer intelligibility and clear direction, Jakub Choma subverts their functionality. Rather than facilitating movement, the sign here leads astray, generating profound ambivalence. Instead of guiding us, it provokes doubt regarding our whereabouts, our destination, and whether we can trust the information surrounding us at all. The sign ceases to act as an aid, transforming instead into a symbol of control that points to the invisible apparatus of late capitalism—one that directs, regulates, and shapes our choices while remaining perpetually elusive. Although the sculptures appear to integrate industrial waste or ready-made elements, they are, in fact, meticulously constructed. The artist leverages this tension to underscore the blurred boundary between reality and simulation in contemporary life. In the previous installation Dead End, a strobe light lays bare the duality of police surveillance: the maintenance of order that simultaneously instills terror and repression. The light signals both safety and threat; it illuminates the artwork itself while concurrently subjecting the viewer to an interrogative gaze. The objects emerge as autonomous structures operating according to their own internal logic. They become inert orientation points that prompt us to cease following instructions and instead radically rethink the very concepts of orientation, control, and choice.
The performance by Hana Polanská and Jakub Choma enters the labyrinth as
a hypertextual space wherein Choma’s hybrid sculptures critically intersect with history as well as contemporary technological and capitalist structures. The vertical, disciplined, and representative body—associated with courtly power, control, dignity, and the Western humanist ideal—gradually disintegrates into stooped, exhausted figures, absurd repetitions, mundane gestures, and everyday corporeality. Out of these corrupted and stuttering codes, the body of a video game NPC ultimately emerges—a character subjugated by the game’s system, trapped in a continuous loop and an error glitch. This visual landscape of signs and precarious events gradually converges at the center of the labyrinth, near a sculpture where their temporary, volatile connection is staged.
For overmentioned performance click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vV9wKKION00
Photos: Jan Kolský
Text: Agáta Hosnová
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