Artist: Lenka Černota’s
Title: A Wolf transformed into Planet and then became a stain
Venue: Pragovka Gallery
Curator: Edita Mikolášková
The exhibition displays the ways of presentation and other dimensions of interpretation offered by Lenka Černota’s works. It seems that Lenka’s life theme, which is variously modified according to the interest and current state of her mind, is a wolf – a wolf that is depicted in her work on a symbolic level, in abstract expression, or quite realistically. However, in the last phase of creation, realism is rapidly decreasing as the silhouettes or wolves’ mouths dissolve into colourful associations. In Lenka’s works, realism or physicality is expressed rather by the way of her painting style – she paints with her hands, and she uses her body as a scale, as a tool. Lenka’s painting expression involves also her lifestyle, her entire daily life and rituals. She carries it on her shoulders like a lone wolf and she can use it in painting as the main medium of her expression. She dives deeply into her soul to emphasize her anxieties and joys. In any case, Lenka created her own, intimate universe, where images, sketches, colours, or textual passages form complex bonds, antagonisms, and parallels, but also expressions of physical laws like the universe and ideas about it in human minds. Her new project concerns placing a picture in the forest for animal viewers – photo traps shot raw and at the same time charming pictures of forest animals, peacefully grazing in front of the image of the beast.
The paintings in the exhibition are left with space for their own lives. Some paintings, due to the centrifugal force of the more dominant companion, “crawled” into the corners of the exhibition area and found more suitable place. Corner Picture “Yes/No” and “4 oči/Horčice” / “4 eyes/Mustard” give place to the reflectively purple “Zvonek” / “Bell”. The picture called “4 Slunce” / “4 Suns” has settled on the ceiling. Other canvas “Hledí” / “Gaze” at us from a safe distance. The largest and the most difficult format – the “Finské oko” / “Finnish Eye” and its bright colours brought itself to the ceiling. The realistic canvas of wolves “Síla vlka” / “The Power of the Wolf” and “Christmas Wolf” remained soberly in the viewers’ visions in the middle of the area. The symbolic works “Do hada” / “To the Snake” and “Yes/No” offer themselves to everyone and want to be accessible to everyone – they are placed in the level of an eye and touch.
Through the colourful foils, suppressed colour moments come alive. The human eye cannot spot those, but the animal one could.
The pictures come alive in their own universe that was bordered by Lenka, even if they do not physically move or breathe…
