Documentation from the exhibition "Angry Birds" at Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, 2012





Documentation from the exhibition "The Picture" at Gallery 207 in Prague, 2011






Documentation from the exhibition "And so on and so forth", Contemporary Art Centre KIM? in Riga, 2012








Documentation from the exhibition "And so on and so forth", Contemporary Art Centre KIM? in Riga, 2012

Documentation from the exhibition "Side Effects II", Grenoble Ancient Museum+Library building, Grenoble, 2014

      Pat and Mat are two Czech artists who work together as a collaborative duo “A je to! (... And it's done!)” and have been collaborating since 1976. They are known for their distinctive site-specific projects that display a highly experimental appearance and manner.
      Art critics often see in the parodying bearing of Pat and Mat's work parallels to Marcel Duchamp, Dieter Roth, Jean Tinguely, Jackson Pollock, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Jiří Kovanda, and Tomáš Vaněk.
      In their work they make use of a multitude of artistic forms of expression: paintings, objects, sculptures made out of different materials, kinetic works, performance, and mixed media installations.
      With spontaneous excitement and fast decision-making processes they demonstrate the possibility of seeing newly developed relationships between site-specific sculptures and everyday contexts. One of the main aspects of their work could be seen as an endeavour to overcome the so-called gap between art and life by dealing directly with reality – the world of consumption. For Pat and Mat the concept of site-specific has nothing to do with opinion or belief, it is a purely natural approach – empirical and non-intellectual. The result is achieved through deconstruction, transformation, and recycling processes. Failure, miscalculation, and imperfection are very often central elements to their work. Furthermore, their work creates a dialogue with the surroundings and a constant fight with logic and physics, for example by suggesting problematic perceptions of distance, orientation, and coordination in space. In the process of creation Pat and Mat consciously mix vertical and horizontal directions. Artists deal with the environmental components of everyday places and usually use basic household tool kit. The scale and size of works are determined by the site, whether it is in an urban or rural landscape. A high number of works are produced and installed in their apartments and almost never displayed for the public. It's important to mention that the lifetime of the art works are often very short. To preserve the artefacts artists use the form of video documentation. Similar to Swiss artist Roman Signer, Pat and Mat never invite an audience to their performances or site-specific installations.
        At the same time it is necessary to take into consideration not only the formal but also the social and political aspects of Pat and Mat's work. The artists express critical judgements about the larger social and political contexts. With an idiotic attitude they show themselves as a parody of DIY culture and can be perceived as an opposition to over-intellectualized art. Like “dadaists” they are against standardization, order and perfectionism in civilisation, and the concept of economy and behaviour. Thanks to their “defects” and “mistakes,” Pat and Mat gain originality.

Manifesto:

1.The position is composed – that is, it has not been taken from an actual site, but has been invented for the specific purpose of providing a problem.

2.There is a specific requirement, that is, a goal to be achieved.

3.There is a theme (or combination of themes) that the problem has been composed to illustrate.

4.The problem exhibits economy in its construction: no greater force is employed than that required to render the problem sound (that is, to guarantee that the problem's intended solution is indeed a solution and that it is the problem's only solution).

5.The problem has aesthetic value. Problems are experienced not only as puzzles but as objects of beauty. This is closely related to the fact that problems are organized to exhibit clear ideas in as economical a manner as possible.