Šimon Sýkora (born 1990) studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. He also works in the fields of video and performance art. His figural paintings, which are characterised by a magically unsettling and melancholic atmosphere, seem to follow a shrouded storyline of fateful encounters, journeys and partings of ways. They also express feelings of loneliness and uprootedness in a strange place beyond time. In terms of subject matter, they draw on a variety of sources, but they also indirectly reflect oppressive feelings of isolation, insecurity and frustration at the current state of the art scene that have led Sýkora to lead a somewhat nomadic life and to seek voluntary exile.