Ex Libris series

_Ex Libris_ is James McGrath’s most ambitious spatial and conceptual undertaking to date: a meticulous, full-scale reimagining of the Strahov Monastic Library in Prague, repainted and recontextualized through the lens of the Baroque and the digital. This series goes beyond architectural homage—it is a form of embodied remembrance, where every shelf, scroll, and gilded cornice is reinterpreted not just as surface but as narrative. Layering digital modelling with traditional oil technique, McGrath reassembled the library from memory and on screen, before translating it into monumental canvas works at a 1:1 scale. Into this rigorously structured environment, he inserted birds, rabbits, and cascading flowers—not as intrusions, but as metaphors for the artist's personal sense of fragility and awe within such a loaded historical space. Rather than simply depict a place, _Ex Libris_ performs it. The animals stand in for the viewer and for McGrath himself—tentative figures navigating a world of accumulated knowledge, where beauty is both seductive and oppressive. The act of repainting the library becomes a kind of artistic pilgrimage: an attempt to reconcile contemporary image-making with centuries-old systems of thought. In doing so, McGrath turns the library from a storehouse of fixed knowledge into a living, breathing theatrical space—at once sacred, sensual, and deeply human.