For his new exhibition at Galerie Derouillon, Vojtěch Kovařík unveils a new body of work in conversation with Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) and Henri Rousseau (1844–1910).

Across the gallery walls, a mythology of a new kind unfolds. The artist Vojtěch Kovařík (born in 1993) takes over the space with a new pictorial cycle, to which he has chosen to add a marble sculpture, a medium rarely seen in his practice. Whether painted or sculpted, the figures appear—through the massiveness of their bodies, their nudity, and the innuendo embedded in their titles—as a gallery of heroes and gods abandoned to their fate.

Visitors will notice that the artist’s sculpture is not the only surprise here. Indeed, the artist’s works are joined by two major figures from the history of art at the turn of the twentieth century: Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) and Henri Rousseau, known as “Le Douanier Rousseau” (1844–1910). Here, Vojtěch Kovařík has chosen to place himself in the wake of a particular art history in…