An Archaeology of the Future in Regent’s Park: Matyáš Chochola and the New Spirit of Concrete
As early autumn traces its first colors across the pathways of The Regent’s Park, a series of monumental silhouettes emerges, evoking ancient relics transposed from a dig site beyond time itself. Installed within the park’s natural landscape for Frieze Sculpture 2026, Czech artist Matyáš Chochola’s three colossal works—BRUTALIST, METEOR, and MACE II—fuse the stark discipline of a digital future with the tactile, organic imprint of the human hand. Curated by Fatoş Üstek, this open-air exhibition unfolds as an immersive encounter where, from every angle, dynamic surface textures transform raw material into a living narrative.
The trio forms one of the most compelling anchors of Chochola’s broader 12-part series, Virtues and Vices of Our Time: 300 Years Later. Here, the artist’s trajectory reaches back three centuries to the Baroque allegories carved by Matthias Bernard Braun for the Kuks Hospital in Eastern Bohemia. Once rendered in sandstone, those 18th-century moral personifications are resurrected at the nexus of Cubism, Brutalism, classical mythology, and 1980s sci-fi aesthetics. Just as Braun’s originals were eventually retired indoors for conservation and replaced by concrete casts, Chochola blurs the boundary between original and copy, past and future, beneath the canopy of The Regent’s Park.
Stepping closer to trace the details of their surfaces, one immediately senses the productive tension between the razor-sharp precision of robotic 3D printing and the artist’s visceral, manual intervention. Produced in collaboration with Czech technology firm Voxell, these monuments—each standing three to four metres tall and weighing nearly a tonne—transcend mere concrete masses. Breaking free from the rigid layering typical of robotic arms, their angular contours have been sanded, carved, and polished into an almost bone-like, organic texture. Embedded by hand into the cold, raw grey of the concrete are shards of coloured glass, fragments of bronze and brass, and custom pigments that catch the shifting daylight, lending each sculpture a dramatic, evolving depth.
Within the park’s verdant setting, the atmospheric resonance of the three works is multi-layered:
BRUTALIST reinterprets the deconstructed classical column, marrying the uncompromising geometry of Brutalist architecture with the playful irreverence of the Memphis Group and the sleek aesthetics of futuristic cinema.
METEOR draws inspiration from the historic meteorite discovered in Oregon, known as Tomanowos to the Chinook nation. Hand-embedded glass fragments catch the light filtering through the park’s dense canopy, triggering a celestial luminosity across its surface.
MACE II commands attention with a copper-powder finish infused directly into dark anthracite concrete. Recalling both a monumental archaic war club and a technological artifact recovered from a cult science-fiction film, it offers one of the most tactile expressions of brute aesthetics in the exhibition.
Remaining in dialogue with the landscape of The Regent’s Park until 1 November 2026, these works offer more than a formal display of outdoor sculpture; they invite viewers to experience a hybrid ecology bridging ancient stonemasonry and tomorrow’s robotic art. To stand in the quiet shade of these concrete giants is to witness material transformation in its most tangible, timeless form.
