Artwork of the month:
Viktor Frešo — Niemand & Tire

In 2025, the sculpture collection of the Nitra Gallery (NG) successfully acquired two distinctive works by Viktor Frešo. These include the now-iconic sculpture Pičus/Niemand (2025) — registered in the Central Register of Works of Fine Art under the less pejorative variant of the title, Niemand/Nobody — and the sculpture/readymade Tire (2008). Pičus entered the gallery’s collection as a direct gift from the artist, while the “tire sculpture” was acquired through purchase.

Since its premiere, Pičus has become perhaps the best-selling sculpture in the history of Slovak statuary, not only abroad but, paradoxically, also at home in Slovakia, a country generally notorious for its conservative and underdeveloped artistic taste. Since then, an entire army has been created in several size versions, as well as material and character variants (annoyed, pissed off…)” (K. Bajcurová).

This sculpture has succeeded in intensifying the definitive image/legend of the artist and his artistic strategy, which Viktor Frešo has been developing since the beginning of his career. Who is Niemand (Pičus)? The artist himself asserts “that it is a person on the borderline between the ridiculous, the cunning, and at the same time a malicious little rascal; an insecure yet conceited, arrogant bastard of the kind that so often irritates one in life” ¹. Its creation was preceded by oil paintings of figures with large round heads, followed by drawings and the sculpture Pičus itself. In his monograph, Frešo claims that we have always sought to bridge disparate worlds. “The only uncontrollable or intangible thing in terms of its origin is emotion. We cannot coordinate or even understand its emergence in any way. We can later work with emotion, learn to control it, or somehow suppress it. However, it remains dominant. It stands at the inception of art itself. Yet, the emotional space is the least explored, and sciences such as psychology understand emotion as something they can name, but cannot modify its origin in any way. We can work with emotion ex post, but there is no manual on how to be prepared for it. This is an interesting thing — in my works, I primarily try to capture emotions. Pičusis a typical example of my play with emotions. It rarely angers anyone, even though it presents negative emotions, which I consider an interesting phenomenon. When you see a negative image — dark, ugly, depressive — it usually affects you that way. It does not bring a smile to your face. But with this sculpture, it is the opposite. The moment of comic experience lies in the fact that Pičus is only one metre tall, thereby remaining small even in relation to the viewer, and his self-importance is ridiculous even in terms of scale.”²

Niemand is a marked artist’s cast from 2025 and a satirical self-portrait, representing a form of self-deprecating humour. Viktor Frešo is among the tallest sculptors on the scene (approx. 2 metres) and his very appearance is monumental. Throughout his career, he has worked with his unmistakable physical stature — a narrative of ego-size (“egoart”, “mongoloid pop-art”). This involves the artist’s round head with a “Janosik-like figure” and its post-conceptual, often politically incorrect and rut

The artist’s communicative directness, his art notwithstanding, offends some while entertaining others. The strategy of self-presentation and self-promotion, where the product of art is the artist Viktor Frešo himself, occasionally appears as a successful accidental “prank”. However, as the artist matures, we find that it is indeed a systematically and continuously constructed process of presenting his own work/person (Kiss Your Idol, Who’s the King, I Was Here, The Birth of Pičus). If one is to stand out from the crowd, one should do so thoroughly! Paradoxically, despite this ego-centric direction, he has frequently collaborated with other artists (egos) — (Fifty-Fifty group, Egoart, Binderfresh, Frešo – Černý, Frešo – Koller, Frešo – Dokoupil).

Since the late 1990s, he has explored a myriad of visual media; however, his recent period focuses primarily on the creation of sculptures/readymades and objects. (An endless flirtation with the concept of what constitutes a “good sculpture”). He mixes materials and contexts in a manner uniquely his own. Although Niemand is Frešo’s most famous sculptural execution, the author of this text considers a very powerful sculptural moment, in terms of gesture, to be a four-metre beam jammed into the wall of a gallery in Trnava (Now That’s What I Call a Sculpture, 2007). At this point, space opens to mention the technical execution and the reflection upon the works and their content. He transforms discarded everyday objects — leading to their fusion/hybridisation — into new situations and — inevitably, as we are speaking of Frešo — into new tensions, jokes, and commentaries.

The second acquisition, Tire (2008), belongs precisely to this category. The “alpha-male/macho” Frešo has (once again) invented the wheel, quite literally. Many of his objects employ the shape of a wheel (e.g., rubber casters). Overall, Frešo’s “macho” output may initially appear clumsy or even heavy-handed, but upon further inspection, the artist’s very specific poetics (of paradox) reveals itself, demonstrating a perfect command of post-production. The elevation of an old tire to a (post-post) modernist sculpture acts subversively, simultaneously questioning and amplifying the content of the object/sculpture. It is not important what the work is made of or how it looks; what matters is what/whom it presents. It is another facet of reinforcing the artist’s cult of personality.

Observers may also recall his participation in the Oskár Čepan Award competition, which he defended by throwing a stone into the exhibition space where the award ceremony was taking place, breaking a window and (not) attending the ceremony.