Jan Kadlec

Jan Kadlec (born 1976) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and, in the 1990s, dazzled the Czech art scene with his visionary installations. He later brought his talents to architecture, stage design, costume design and film production design. He lives in Prague and in Lugano, Switzerland.

The world of film has allowed Kadlec to make his exceptional talent visible. In 2013 he was nominated for the Czech Lion Award for Best Visual Achievement for the film Clowns. In 2025 he won Czech Lions for Best Visual Achievement (Production Design), Best Costumes and Best Film Poster for the film Girl America (Amerikánka). The film had already been nominated the previous year for Best Production Design at the Tallinn Film Festival and also received the Czech Film Critics’ Award for Best Visual Achievement (Production Design) and the ATAFF Award for Best Production Design.

Kadlec’s versatile talent stands out in numerous cross-disciplinary projects, most recently realized primarily in film. Yet his monumental objects should not be mistaken for mere film props, as their strong presence in galleries confirms. Kadlec’s art objects speak the accessible language of globalized symbols and address human pettiness and the necessity of self-reflection. Their monumentality and ironic overstatement attract and entertain audiences, while also serving as a memento mori.

In his independent work, Jan Kadlec opens up a range of themes concerning the formulation of the visual reality of today and tomorrow. Our thinking, perception and decision-making are influenced above all by digital images that bombard us daily in infinite quantities. Kadlec exposes their banality and transforms it into unexpected beauty. He creates objects and installations that distill the contemporary world and pose the question of whether art is still an active mirror of our reality. In the mid-1990s Kadlec drew media attention with his iconic oversized bed whose headboard was shaped like the McDonald’s logo; it was immediately purchased by an art collector after being exhibited at the Prague City Gallery in the Municipal Library. In 2007 he won the main prize at the Sculpture Grande exhibition with his monumental work Pig, which was displayed on Prague’s Republic Square.

Jan Kadlec is currently preparing a large-scale exhibition, with new works now in development and production.