Homo Viator – Svätopluk Mikyta

For the past 19 years Svätopluk Mikyta has been foraging for books in the antiquity stores, bazaars and flea markets of Central Europe. He subsequently tears out the reproductions within them, smears paint over text, erases parts of the images and adds new visual information using a graphite pencil. All of this is done to alter the ’source code’ of the imagery. The first book from the ’MIKYTA’ series is titled ’Homo Viator’. It documents the artist’s obsession with the polygraphic print as a source material. In this publication a more than 150 reproductions of his work, made between the year 1997 and the present, will find their way back into book form. An accompanying essay by Jan Zálešák follows Mikyta’s journey starting in Stuttgart, where he conducted his studies, through his stay in Berlin and Prague to his return to the Slovak village – a base from which he continues to visit various European capitals, where he regularly exhibits.