Lukáš Machalický has a long history of creating exhibitions that straddle the line between architecture, sculpture and object art and in which he explores subjects associated with urbanism, architecture and the social memory of specific places. His works are characterised by architectural rigour, careful consideration and an eye for detail, but they also create situations that move back and forth between certainty and uncertainty.

The exhibition titled Half Board is a site-specific installation in the Crossovers exhibition space at the former Jesuit College. The installation responds to the historic character of the place while simultaneously transforming it into a new and constructed environment through which Machalický explores the present day and its eclectic nature. In this way, he follows on from earlier projects in which he worked with the concepts of stage sets, fiction and mystification while calling attention to the increasingly blurred line between reality and its representation in today’s manufactured (media and otherwise) world.

At the centre of the installation is the Vaníček Hotel, built in the 1990s on the site of a garage as a distinctive expression of the era’s image of luxury, social status and power. Its architecture also acts as a model for a structure, a construction that visitors walk through. The geometrical construction is also a reference to 3D modelling programs and accentuates the relationship between the physical and virtual space. Entering into this contrasting environment gives viewers a space for personal reflection.

Machalický understands architecture as reflecting our relationship to the contemporary world. He constructs situations that feel both familiar and unsettling, and in this way raises questions as to the value system of contemporary society.

The model of the Vaníček Hotel was created in collaboration with the Ivo Louda studio.