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A new sculpture that blends 1980s nostalgia and modern art has captured the imagination of visitors in Klatovy, in Czechia's Pilsen Region. Titled Copy, the piece depicts Sylvester Stallone's iconic character Rocky Balboa in his victory pose, and is crafted from nearly 50,000 VHS tapes.
The monumental sculpture is the work of Czech artist Jan Kadlec and is part of his ongoing project The Sistine Chapel is Dead (Sixtinská kaple je mrtvá). The piece made its world premiere at the Church of St. Lawrence in Klatovy last weekend.
Kadlec’s creation stands at approximately ten meters tall and is a nostalgic commentary on the 1990s VHS boom in Czechia. The tapes, once symbols of Western cinematic culture, serve as a medium to evoke the past.
The image of Rocky, crafted from the tapes, takes on a pixelated appearance, symbolizing the degradation of quality with each subsequent copy made—a commentary on both the passage of time and the consumable nature of media. The choice of the church as the backdrop adds another layer of meaning.
Art meets consumerism—and religion
The piece is more than just a nod to 80s and 90s pop culture. Kadlec reflects on the role of consumerism and the idea of image degradation in the age of mass production. The sculpture taps into this visual history, using VHS tapes to recreate an image that was never fully authentic, much like the countless copies of Hollywood films circulating during that time.
"In the context of visual art, the work speaks about the recycling of the original image, just as big films were brought to us in the 1980s and were constantly copied, leading to a distortion of the original image. This became embedded in our memory, as we never saw the real one," Kadlec told journalists at the unveiling of Copy.
The piece also has a significant cultural context. As Kadlec points out, the 1980s marked the rise of consumerism and the “age of disposability.” Today, society finds itself at the peak of this trend, where value is often tied to consumption rather than preservation.
The church setting gives the work an additional layer of meaning, making the Rocky sculpture appear almost like a revered religious figure—"a modern-day Jesus," as Kadlec humorously refers to it.
A larger artistic context
Kadlec’s work isn't just an isolated piece; it is part of the broader Sculptures in the Streets (Sochy v ulicích) festival, an annual event showcasing large-scale sculptures in public spaces across the Czech Republic.
This year, the festival focuses on works by artists who were influenced by the teachings of Hugo Demartini, an influential sculptor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague during the 1990s. Kadlec himself was a student of this school and draws on that legacy, combining his sculptural work with a critical examination of culture, media, and memory.
The exhibition, now open to the public in Klatovy, invites visitors to reflect on the ways in which media—once the epitome of modern technology—can become a relic with its own unique history embedded in its very form.
Copy isn’t the first time VHS tapes have been used as an artistic medium. Notable projects in the genre include the work of Italian artist Lorenzo Durantini, who utilized the medium in his collection 2,216 VHS Tapes, which included towers built from videos and rooms filled with unspooled tape.
Visitors can now see Copy at the Church of St. Lawrence in Klatovy, about 25 kilometers south of Pilsen. Admission to the historic venue, which dates back to the 17th century, is only CZK 10. The sculpture, which can be disassembled into ten pieces for transportation, will also be presented at other venues across Czechia in the future.
