Enter a world of invented rituals, strange creatures, and dark humor. PAF New York presents Paul Gondry’s The Chronicles of Shpongle alongside Jan Švankmajer’s The Garden, with Gondry and PAF curators Nela Klajbanová and Martin Mazanec joining us in person.
REGISTERPaul Gondry’s The Chronicles of Shpongle brings sculpture, storytelling, and performance together in a surreal countercultural universe. What began as sculpted bongs inspired by Burning Man culture grew into the mythology of the “Shponglers,” who escape reality through hallucinatory rituals, imagined drugs, and fantastical folklore. Set partly in a nightmarish New York, the film follows eccentric characters through a world where fantasy becomes a way of life.
The program also features Jan Švankmajer’s The Garden (1968). A visit to a country villa reveals a garden enclosed by a living fence of people holding hands. Based on a story by Ivan Kraus, this darkly comic allegory explores conformity, authority, and the ease with which the absurd becomes ordinary.
Paul Gondry is a Paris-born, New York-based artist and filmmaker who studied film, animation, and video at the Rhode Island School of Design. A co-founder of the gallery 15 Orient, he works across film, sculpture, installation, and collaborative projects. His work has been presented at MX Gallery in New York, Deborah Schamoni in Munich, and Simo Bacar in Lisbon.
Presented by PAF in collaboration with Czech Center New York as part of PAF New York 2026. An international curatorial platform for contemporary art and the moving image, PAF explores this year’s theme, Bestiary, through hybrid forms and the ways technology, institutions, and habits of seeing shape how images are classified and circulated.
