“Archetypes, Space and Abstraction” was the title and subject of the latest exhibition by Czech artist Jiří Thýn. Like a number of contemporary artists who in this time of crisis have chosen to mine the hopeful era of early modernism, Thýn conceives a dialogue with the twentieth-century avant-garde—in his case with artists such as the Czech Cubist sculptor Otto Gutfreund, whose works Thýn sets into motion through the medium of photography.

It would be wrong to understand Thýn’s approach as a mere gesture of appropriation, which might come to mind when encountering his Untitled, 2011, a