Beginning: 18:00
Guided tour of the Topography of Solitude exhibition with curator Silvia L. Čúzyová and author Michal Škoda.
Michal Škoda's interest in "image" is deep and constant. The artistic transformation of one type of image into another is one of the fundamental pillars of his work. He realises his lifelong themes - interest in space, architecture, place for people - in reduced form and colour through various techniques. Drawings, collages, paintings, occasional installations, photographic records, a years-long series of parallel artist's books and multi-layered diaries, form the myriad records of the various images with which his life is filled.
The Topography of Solitude exhibition at Olomouc's Telegraph Gallery presents for the first time more than thirty canvases from Škoda's most recent series of paintings (2020-2022). The current painting chapter is not entirely new, however, as Škoda has been working with different types of painting for a decade, and painting on canvas is essentially an extension of the possibilities of recording images in an old-new technique. This time, the artist has "tempted" the conventional format of painting on canvas and with it has accepted the limitations that this medium creates, including the burden of the tradition of more than a hundred years of abstract painting. Here, too, he remained true to his nature, vision and imagination. Abstract, geometric and with a specific transcendence, he reflects and visualizes "relations - boundaries - positive emptiness". He creates art that rewards slower, more meditative viewing.
In short, the creative arc of Škoda's paintings on canvas has so far moved from startling colour and more personal content, soon back to a consciously restrained style of essentially pure concentrated geometry, in black and white and shades of grey, as simplified as possible, but not deadened or emptied in content and effect. Empiricism is transformed and reduced to the abstract form of geometric impression, through which the artist shares the pleasure of precision, order and harmony. Essential simplicity and elemental beauty may be the central theme.
Curated by Silvia L. Čúzyová
