Tadeáš Podracký — It Grows With You

The solo exhibition by multidisciplinary sculptor and designer Tadeáš Podracký, titled It Grows With You, presented in MeetFactory’s main gallery, will showcase the artist’s oeuvre from the past five years through several distinct series. In his practice, Podracký explores the human environment through objects that deliberately operate on the threshold between design and fine art. They draw on the “DNA” of functional artefacts (a mirror, chair, chaise longue, or chandelier), yet their final forms intentionally disrupt utility, treating function less as an end in itself than as an interface for communication with the viewer. Central to his work is speculative imagination—the question of what objects and architecture might look like if cultural and social development had taken a different course—alongside a process-driven approach in which ideas do not primarily originate on paper but rather “in the hands.” Podracký sets himself constraints, works through layering, and allows material and embodied decision-making to guide the process in pursuit of the “truthfulness” of the outcome, which matters more to him than a preconceived intellectual construct. His intense handcraft and embodied know-how serve as a critique of the frictionless digitalisation of production: technology (including robots) does not replace human input, but is “bent” to translate and reinterpret the imprint of the body. In recent years, this logic has also been informed by motifs drawn from local rituals and mythologies—his fascination with the uncanny persistence of traditions within an urbanised context—which he does not adopt illustratively, but rather as a model for thinking about how cultural archetypes shape behaviour and how they might, in turn, reshape the very objects that surround us.

Tadeáš Podracký (*1989) graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where he studied in the Glass Studio under Rony Plesl, and from the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands. His work has been presented at numerous international fairs focused on applied arts, as well as in galleries and institutions, including Chamber Gallery New York, Design Miami/Basel, FOG San Francisco, Maison&Objet Paris, Mint Gallery London, mudac (Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts) Lausanne, Designblok Prague, Salone del Mobile Milano, and the London Design Festival. He has received several international awards, including the Czech Grand Design Award in the Discovery of the Year category and the AD Design Award Germany (“Vintage Reloaded”). He is represented by Barcelona’s Side Gallery, and since 2023 he has served as Head of the K.O.V. Studio (Concept–Object–Meaning) at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague.

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