Becoming a Flower.
5. 4. – 28. 4. 2024
opening: 4. 4. 2024 from 6 pm
guided tour: 28. 4. 2024 from 4.30 pm
Masha Kovtun, Markéta Skalková, Barbora Štýblová, Nicolas Prokop
curator: Robin Seidl
"I would like to take a walk through a flowering garden, lie down in the grass and watch the clouds. I’d like to stop thinking for a moment. I'd like to speak with the flower and ask her if she remembers me.”
I am curating two exhibitions for the Jelení Gallery this year. It is my first time in this role. I decided to approach the exhibition Becoming a Flower more as an artist, one of the authors of the exhibition, rather than a curator, since this role is much more familiar to me. I approached four artists who at one time or another had depicted the motif of a flower, which became an important symbol for them, as it did for me. Through the flower we share emotions and fears that all of us experience. Together with the artists, we find ourselves in a place that may seem familiar - like our grandparents' garden, the cottage we went to on the weekends when we were little, or the woods behind our house where we played and built little houses. When we look closer, however, we realize that alongside the memories, this garden presents very different plant forms and animal species than we remember.
Masha Kovtun's paintings reflect a strong relationship to the theme of home and the loss of security caused by the war in Ukraine. They are intimate views from the window of the house she cannot live in under the current situation, views she constantly remembers. Markéta Skalková's drawings show a strong empathy for nature and its transformation. Creatures – new animal species emerge from the countless drawings that Markéta records her emotions with on a daily basis. They appear under the deposits of old layers . Barbora Štýblová points to the close and intimate relationship between man and nature. Her flowers radiate the joy of the moment of encounter and the life they have discovered. Nicolas Prokop's flowers, on the other hand, seem to pass through a world that is already devoid of people. They pass and remember, some perhaps mourn. All the artists are thus united by a strong relationship with nature and the future of our coexistence with it.
Robin Seidl
Masha Kovtun is studying at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, where she continues her Master's studies in the Studio of Fine Arts III headed by Michal Pěchouček and Dominik Gajarski. In Ukraine, where Masha comes from, she completed her Bachelor's Degree in Architecture at PGASA. She works with installation, combining the media of painting, video and sculpture. Her work carries nostalgia, melancholy and the search for her own identity determined by the specificity of the situation of an immigrant living in Prague. Her work is therefore strongly related to the theme of home in the broadest sense of the word, and to the loss of intimacy and security in a constantly changing world.
Nicolas Prokop is a Czech-German multidisciplinary artist. He completed his Master's Degree in 2023 at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, in the Studio of Fine Arts I, headed by Zuzana Jakalová and Dominik Lang. He works with natural materials, through the dematerialization and re-materialization of which emerges the special organic aesthetics of his work. Through his work, he presents us with his own ideas about other environments as well as microscopic views of the world and interspecies relationships.
Markéta Skalková is an artist, performer, graphic designer and tattoo artist. She mostly works with the media of drawing, textiles, installation, object, computer graphics, live performance or sound and their combinations and intersections. As a member of the Welnesssssss group, she is involved in an artistic research on rest and relaxation in late capitalism. Markéta is currently completing her Master's Degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Brno Technical University in the Environment Studio.
Barbora Štýblová completed her Bachelor's Degree at Masaryk University in Brno and is currently studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in the Studio of Painting II headed by Milan Mikuláštík and Julius Reichl. Barbora's paintings reflect an intimate relationship between man and nature, the earth and the plant kingdom.
The program of the Jeleni Gallery is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Council, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, City District Prague 7,
GESTOR – The Union for the Protection of Authorship
Thanks: art re use
Media partners: ArtMap, artalk.cz and jlbjlt.net
