THE BOB PETRA
GENERATIVE MIND LAB
since 1986
BOB PETRA is not an artist. It's a process.
– a space, a gaze, a rebellion disguised as poetry.
The spitting image from DIY cultures and shaped by the remnants of gallery ruins, BOB operates in the space between the unpolished and the inevitable - that which doesn’t seek approval, but insists on existing.
"It’s about acting without asking your mum - creation without filters. Starting messy, staying honest and finding the beauty it all."
BOB wasn’t born...
BOB was generated as a fusion of life, art, and detours. Born out of a need to create without permission.
BOB PETRA is a generative state.
Not an artist in the traditional sense, but a laboratory, a rhythm, a glitch in the polished system - an open circuit that refuses to solidify into identity, style, or strategy.
"This is made between night shifts, during breakdowns, over unpaid rent, and in half-dreamt visions. We don't wait for peace and quiet. We carry the noise with pride".
Since 1986
– whether that’s a birth year or fiction, BOB PETRA has navigated in thoughts and identities since... well for a long time now.
Not to possess them, the identities, but to set them in motion. This is an experimental practice, where intuition, repetition, and reuse form new connections between the personal and the political, the mundane and the sacred, the inner and the public sphere.
There is no fixed method.
Only movement.
The gallerist
BOB PETRA is the physical counterpart to an art world where naive and playful creatives unfold. So BOB PETRA is Monday Studio – and Monday Studio is a work of art in itself.
It's a place that embraces mistakes, edges, and wild growth. Where art sometimes hangs crooked, and where everything is part of an unfinished exhibition - even the shelf in the corner.
It’s a counter-reaction to an art system that filters and sorts - here, what usually gets excluded is shown: the self-taught, the strange, the raw, the underground.
"Well, we don't show up for lukewarm champagne in curled up paper cups, to see the so-called unique painting exhibited - that painting you can’t even see because someone’s blocking it with their poke-an-eye out extended selfie-sticks.
In everything we do, we aim to build something else – a space where small and sometimes weird ideas can grow freely, before anyone tries to smooth them out.
It’s about creating the connection between you and me. The conversation. That conversation that bridges people and expressions, art and everyday life.
It’s not about understanding everything – it’s about feeling something stir".
We don’t believe in representation but in presence.
We don’t see curation as filtering but as frameless amplification.
BOB PETRA is not the center, but an amplifier of other voices, marks, chaos, and potential.
