Strange Middleland
 Štěpán Brož

The title of the exhibition refers to the medieval myth of the legendary land known in German-speaking countries as Schlaraffenland. It is a folk legend about a land of laziness in which everything is plentiful and no one has to work. Feathered fowl and golden cakes grow on trees and sweet wine flows in rivers instead of ordinary water. We know a famous depiction of this legend, for example, from Pietro Brueghel the Elder’s painting In the Land of Pecival from 1567. As interpreted by the French historian Jacques Le Goff, the myth reflected a contemporary critique of the social order, an ironic commentary on the Christian ideology of the time and a popular fantasy escape from the harsh reality of the rural poor.

Štěpán Brož uses this myth as a basis for composing his own imaginary world, into which he projects his long-standing interest in the fantasy genre and, more specifically, in the motif of the “New Middle Ages”. That is, a kind of fantasy lore in which humanity in the near future, after a series of dramatic social changes, reaches a stage of civilization reminiscent of European medieval feudal society.