This painting is part of the cycle Dómácí potřeby / Needs of Home, focusing on the raw aesthetics of places where Asian commercial pragmatism meets the Central European demand for cheap products, accessibility and instant gratification.
It captures the new visuality of small stores on the city outskirts, where the effort to attract customers is not guided by aesthetic intent, but by the economical expediency of everyday survival.
Shop windows, signs, products and improvised compositions create a raw image of pragmatism that goes right to the core. Here, strips of tape, taped over the glass to hold the displayed products in place, inadvertently form the shape of crosses. This turns a practical gesture into an unexpected symbol: a fragile, almost unconscious sign buried in the middle of commerce.
It is precisely because aesthetics are not treated as a separate value that an authentic visual record of the environment is created, in which everything has its immediate purpose. This purposefulness creates its own ornament, hard, unpolished and surprisingly precise.
Despite the continuous availability and apparent openness of these places, a quiet sadness lingers in the background. The small store becomes a chapel of goods where human presence is lost in the multitude of products, brands and colours. Man recedes into the background and things merge into an absurd, complex still life of contemporary life.
