Metal Trail

The previous year of panting in garages made it clear that minimising the grey concrete surfaces was one of the main aims behind this idea. As painting in the garages was not possible due to the demolition and rebuilding of the top carpark in Bondy, we had a good reason to look for a new location. Quite frankly, we had been looking at the parking house near Klaudián’s hospital, because we had an interesting idea. We were planning to create an almost 360-degree painting on the staircase of the parking house. As the parking house has 8 floors, the painting would clearly be much more than a one-year project. JUDr. Ladislav Řípa, the Director of Klaudián’s hospital was supportive of our idea and understood that the project would be implemented across several years of the Metal Symposium. However, the idea that people would remember on which floor they parked their car thanks to the painting was sufficiently interesting.

To make this idea work, we needed an artist who would be willing and able to take on the project. Frankly speaking, the Metal Symposium depends on sponsors. How many floors we can paint depends on how many sponsors we can get. It was important to manage at least one floor per year.

With the help of Jakub Bechyně, we contacted Vladimír Hirscher, an artist working under the pseudonym Caer8th. As we started our work on the top floor, the theme of deep space was an obvious choice. Vladimír Hirscher approached the deep space theme comprehensively, connecting the reality with the world of movies. He painted the satellite launched by NASA in 1977 – this satellite is still functional, and it is currently the most distant satellite still in operation. To please science fiction fans, the artist also painted spaceships from Star Trek and Star Wars. To make the painting even better, he added an actual object that appeared and changed its direction without external intervention. As one week is relatively short time, Vladimír Hirscher invited Alessandro Velli to help, and they decorated floors 8 and 7B together. We look forward to continuing in this project next year.