Opening: 21. 9. 2021 at 18:00
Duration: 22. 9. – 13. 2. 2022 (extended)
Curator: Alexandra Tamásová
Exhibition space C, Hlavná 27, Košice
The joint exhibition project of Monika Pascoe Mikyšková and Janja Prokić introduces the latest work of the two artists, who have come together specifically for this occasion. The exhibited works are loosely linked by the motif of plants or, more specifically, growth.
Monika’s small-format watercolour drawings are at first glance “just” an abstract game of colours and forms. While using the watercolour technique, the artist can unwind into playful relaxation and enter the space of lightness, unboundedness, experiment (unlike a primed canvas which automatically evokes a certain commitment). The oval motifs are inspired by the micro-world – cells and their organelles. Until the invention of the microscope, people had no idea of the existence of this world, invisible to the naked eye. The first microscopic research revealed a new layer of reality, which was interpreted, among other things, as proof of God’s existence. The cell is an embryonic symbol of the potential of new life, and at the same time an invisible order inside things that we do not perceive, but which nevertheless exist.
The pictures of larger formats and some of the ceramic objects shift the scale and move the exhibition from the micro-world to the entire bodies of plants, their fantastic and infinitely variable forms. Finally, through landscape painting, our gaze retracts even further in order to perceive the arrangement of the whole landscape. The individual dimensions of reality, installed side by side, therefore appear as mutual parallels.
Janja Prokić, who engages primarily in art jewellery, has for a time stepped out of her usual technique and style of work. Her ceramic objects are the result of cooperation between the material itself and the artist, who, contrary to jewellery practice, gives up part of the control, or a specific idea of the result. At the beginning there is a germ, a seed; from it grows a shape, an expression of the “will” of the material itself, and at the same time a reflection of the author’s current mood. This release of control and surrender to the process is perceived by Janja as an analogy of her (our) current life situation, where plans are falling through due to the pandemic and we are confronted with an existential uncertainty. The result is organic sculptures that evoke a variety of real and fantastic shapes of evolving life.
In both cases, the depiction of plants acts as a metaphor for psychological processes. Cells and seeds represent embryos ready to create a new life, a new story. Instructed by the pandemic paradigm, we transform our ideas of how we would like to create this life. Together with Janja and Monika, we surrender to the organic flow, in which we are not masters, but rather the media of the whole process.
