The title of the exhibition embodies precisely the sort of ambiguity that Vít Soukup was so fond of. On the one hand, it signifies a curated retrospective commemorating the work of the painter, filmmaker and occasional graphic artist who died prematurely; on the other, it alludes to the fact that he was one of the first artists of his generation not to shy away from incorporating genuine retro elements into his work. For Vít Soukup – known to his friends simply as ‘Beruška’ – retro was not merely a nostalgic visual game; the authenticity of his motifs was paramount, which is why he reproduced them from period newspapers, magazines and promotional leaflets. Soukup’s painting gradually evolved from lush realism, through an austere, neurotic expression, to realistic abstraction. His visual language was always firmly rooted in reality, yet at the same time he was able to unsettle it and transform it into an image that is more than merely a record of it. Vít Soukup had the ability to extract from every subject he tackled the essential elements that characterised the era and its Czech imprint. In his early series, he focused primarily on the ideas that defined the mindset of the socialist era. Food as a fetish of abundance, space achievements as the official myth of progress, and fur-lined Cossack caps as the fashionable grotesque of everyday life. For him, this was not a matter of sentimentality, but an analysis of the mental smog that enveloped society at the time. His earnest irony often went beyond the bounds of awkwardness, and through it he was able to identify the mechanisms that shaped collective norms. date and time Mon—Sun 11:00—19:00