Lucie Mičíková and Ivana Hrončeková: The Milky River
6. 4. – 21. 4. 2016
opening: 5. 4. 2016

curator: Barbora Klímová

I painted a picture titled Milk River
I like that picture because one can enter it (…)
(Agnes Martin)

The cooperation of the Milk River exhibition artists probably came about thanks to their presumed affinity. They were both born shortly prior to 1989 in the former Czechoslovakia and they both have direct experience with studying at post-secondary art schools in the two neighbouring countries. Ivana Hrončeková was born in 1987 in Rimavská Sobota, Slovakia and she graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts at Brno University of Technology (in the Czech Republic). Lucie Mičíková was born in 1986 in Tábor, Czech Republic and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (in Slovakia).

For a long time now, Ivana Hrončeková has been focusing her work on issues relating to the cohabitation of Czechs and Slovaks in the present time. She is primarily interested in how this projects into our languages. Enlightened from her study of the Slovak language and literature, she created, for example, an audio library of the studio where she studied. It was made up of excerpts from her classmates’ favourite books translated on the basis of a linguistically informed, utopian system into a hybrid Czechoslovakian language. She professes to the tradition of conceptualism; she is characterized by having an apt and unequivocal point. Although she has not focused on a certain media in her work, interweaving the means of expression of language and moving picture has currently become dominant for her.

For Lucie Mičíková the topic of Czechoslovakia has been rather peripheral. Currently, she has been primarily expressing herself through the form of spatial assemblages in which she leans poetic associative game with architectonic delimited space against attractive literal sources or historical connotations. In her installations she uses primarily the traditional medium of paper, drawing, painting and print. Her interpretations associate the current world, a medley of physical, virtual and mental levels. Her older thesis work was inspired, for example, by the novel of Italo Calvino The Baron in the Trees. “I interconnect the idea of a different view of society from the crown of trees with projects of the architect Yona Friedman and other utopian architects (…) An important factor is perceiving architecture from another perspective.” In addition to collages and spatial installations on this topic Lucie also composed a program of related lectures and readings.

Rhythm of Milk River
One of the possibilities of cooperation of the two artists that was considered was the question of mutual translation of the language/medium of both artists. Throughout their work they found common parallels, one of their sources of inspiration were the essays by American minimalist painter Agnes Martin and the topic of rhythm and motion, which the artists saw in the flowing water. River stream. In the installation Milk River Lucia created a wall painting that mirrors the actual gallery space, as well as her principles of painting composition in creating collages. Ivana parallelly combines video images from the Danube and Morava Rivers. The actual editing of the video once again relates to A. Martin’s essays and searching for language rhythm. 

Jeleni Gallery exhibition program is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and Prague City Council
Media support: Artycok.tv, ArtMap, jlbjlt.net a UMA: You Make Art