KAMILA ZEMKOVÁ / THE DEAD SPOTS

The most remarkable, for some perhaps somewhat old-fashioned but at the same time unusually topical aspect of Lenka Vítková's work is its emblematic nature. However, not in the art-history sense of the word when an image is directly linked with a text in a single sign unit which contains a gnomic title, allegorical representation and an epigram revealing the meaning of the enigmatic title and the even more enigmatic representation. In her case, the emblem is more appropriately understood as a metaphor for a variety of rather personal tactics and artistic strategies in uncovering meaning by obscuring it, and a multifaceted manifestation of the unity of poetry and image.

It is therefore not a literary extension of a work of art, or, conversely, of the imagery of texts but, first and foremost, a condensation of lived experience that allows the artist to perform meaning through a multi-directional exchange between the seen, the thought and the written, an exchange conducted through words, a spatial intervention, sound or moving image, a painterly gesture or the selection and processing of a specific material - in recent years, for example, plaster, which is not just the basis for painting etudes but also comes into play as a visually and haptically active thing-sign. The title of Lenka Vítková's current exhibition and the accompanying publication, First Book of Emblems, is therefore an explicit acknowledgement of the principle of her creative practice, as well as the artist’s suggestion of how the viewer (and the reader) could approach them.

Waving, circling, approaching and receding, leaning, walking, falling. Transformation. A meaning created by the movement of words and the action of the painted surface, by an image related to a sentence. A meaning emerging from the image following a sentence, from a sound or film sequence as a transposition of a word or image. Lenka Vítková's approach to her work is typified by a special kind of civility and ability to speak for herself in relation to the emerging whole of the world through subjects whose prospective banality is cancelled not only by the mentioned emblematic nature but in recent years predominantly by working on the painting, painting as a still-effective way of showing what I mean. Clues which are obviously distilled starting points include not only signs, abstract patterns and abstracted realities or objects and configurations of the seen - glimpsed, but also objects, body fragments and figures. Yet it is always about the whole. Indeed, the subtle objectivity of the subject with which Lenka Vítková is currently working is accompanied at every step by her ability to share much broader contexts, more like a condition than an explanation of the present ones, which make the choice even more significant. Or, last but not least, there is that unsentimental way in which the artist, through painterly means, lays out and activates the surface in order to keep in play the affective qualities of the creative process and their sources.

If Lenka Vítková's works and exhibitions sometimes make the sympathetic viewer feel slightly dizzy, it is due to the continuous stream of exchange between seeing and intellectual work. Her art (she is an exceptional colourist among painters of her generation and beyond) amplifies and intensifies the feeling of the viewer's physical presence in front of the painting or in its space, while at the same time giving meaning to the actual experience that the recipient is undergoing in a difficult-to-convey state of consciousness. One aspect of this type of artistic experience (emphasized by the tradition of modernism) is the result of long-standing exercises through which we still, albeit rarely, and then with a certain suspicion that we are definitely missing something, master the dialectical relationship in which the self and the universe, immediacy and mediation, subjectivity and impersonality, or tradition and its unique fulfilment, can be found. Although we can speculate about what the postmodern emancipation of the sign universe has made possible for the artist and which line of modernist subjective universalism she may be following, the artist herself has described her art practice most accurately: “I’m coming,/ don't know what I’m bringing./ I’ll start somewhere,/ I’ll do something somehow./ Some things the material will do on its own. The gestures I own.”

Text: Marek Pokorný

The project was financially supported by the City of Brno and Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.

KAMILA ZEMKOVÁ / THE DEAD SPOTS

03.09.2014 - 10.10.2014

Fait Gallery PREVIEW
Dominican Square 10, Brno
3/9 – 10/10/2014
Opening: 2/9/2014 at 6pm
Curator: Martin Nytra

The Dead Spots

The work of Kamila Zemková is based on significant interdependence of the personality of the author with her artistic expression, that is characterised by its tendency towards the formal stylization of diary entries. Her continuing interest in situations and tasks experienced in daily reality and inconspicious relationships of the close surroundings stands at the same time for searching of areas dominated by ambiguity and banality. These characteristics are no less charming because of their openness and closeness that enable the artist and her audiences a wide spectrum of approaches and understanding of the art work. The author thus creates conditions for work based on personal experience from close listening to the noteless impressions of the surrounding landscape and the acquisition of this experience through awareness of the subjective territory of her perception and her own imagination. Zemková avoids to name things and aims towards specific, easily understandable meanings. She puts greater emphasis on the imagination of the mind and the emotional level of the perception of the art work. Paradoxically, however, her latest work is relatively specific, conceptually coherent and its realistic design might enable the audience to read the shortcuts to the understanding. Neverthless in my oppinion it would be a mistake to see the peculiarity of the models as an indicator of their final status.

The important fact, that the whole set of pictures processes the views into the interior of the close environment where the author lives and works, is a significant truth, which in the showing of the art works in the space of the gallery creates another possible interpretation or consideration level about the nature of the art works as well as the exhibition as a whole. We usually accept the gallery space free from traces of previous exhibitions, which creates a framework for migrant artistic personalities, with no objections. The interior of the gallery, that is temporarily occupied by the artist is also a space that, for limited time, turns the artist into a showpiece revealed to the public eye. The interior is seen as a zone of intimacy and home as an environment of spiritual and emotional qualities. In the case of Kamila Zemková the questions pointing to the nature of the situation of the exhibition might be important. With regard to the conscious dialogue with worlds of internal and external nature and her unusually personal approach, the situation can be understood as a reflection about the relationship of intimacy, which includes the ability of personal experience and imagination to its high public profile and shared features because of which we keep exposing ourselves to this kind of situation.

Go back