Veronika Vlková / Daddy_rough_and _reduced_final_ok

The events that are present in Tomáš Bárta's paintings take place between two spaces and the partition between them. These pictures inevitably set a "backward course" through the history of European painting, all the way back to Leon Battista Alberti’s reflections on the construction of pictorial space which he incorporated into his seminal work De pictura (1435). However, instead of a well-organised renaissance arrangement, Bárta offers us more ambiguous spatial relations and a spectral illusion of the objects inhabiting his paintings, as if architecture produced its own ghosts.

Veronika Vlková / Daddy_rough_and _reduced_final_ok

19.10.2022 - 14.01.2023

Fait Gallery MEM, Ve Vaňkovce 2, Brno

Curator: Marie Štindlová

Opening: 19 October 2022, 7 pm

Mother and son are travelling on foot to Vienna. On the way they cook, wash, look, show each other things. Sometimes it's difficult, their hands are of stone. The steps are verses and the march is a prayer for healthy relationships. Without losing their humour, they are trying to shake off the layers of patriarchal sediment settled on their arms, hearts, family and landscape.

The title of the exhibition Daddy_rough_and_reduced_final_ok refers in its form and structure to the names of documents stored in the digital environment in a number of variants (rough/final, reduced/hd etc.). Video is therefore the central element of the exhibition. The thematization of the medium and its structure (its disruption) is reflected in the way the artist approaches it. She works with ruptures and distortions which she uses to create similar cracks in stereotypical notions of clearly defined gender roles. She explores them both gently and with a mischievous smile. At the same time, however, she looks with utter seriousness for ways of how to heal patriarchy and masculinity in our time.

The film shows the artist and her teenage son navigating a landscape associated with a family and historical trauma. By experiencing the landscape together and performing certain activities, they seek to heal it, as well as themselves. They encode a desire for renewal and transformation into ordinary gestures of survival and care. The process is complicated by the stone structures embedded in their bodies which make quick movements, fine motoric skills and mutual touching impossible. The pilgrims are hoping that with every kilometre they will leave behind a past that may no longer be part of them, that the stones on their hands will turn to clay and water and they will be able to knead them into different shapes: soft, pliable, yet firm.

Cooking their favourite food, mother and son feed the surrounding gorges. Flowers are guides, together with the son they tell the story of the search for his role. The stream bubbles up and washes away everything unnecessary.

Acknowledgement / Collaboration:

Photography: Maria Lopatyuk, Matěj Nytra, Katarina Kadijević

Sound: Jonatan Pastirčák, Tomáš Dvořák, Kateřina Koutná

Costumes: Kristýna Nytrová

Exhibition design: Martin Nytra

Kanikuly march: Lucie Králíková, Hana Kubešová