Veronika Holcová: The Legend of Water
25. 5. – 30. 6. 2021
curator: Lenka Sýkorová
photo: Dita Lamačová, Markéta Bendová
video: Dita Lamačová
Accompanying program:
Saturday, 12th June 2021, 2- 4 pm workshop for children, 4- 5 pm curator-guided tour with an author.
Spring is associated with the melting of glaciers and the burbling of streams. It is powerful with its healing energy and cleansing aura of a fresh new season full of solar energy that every year comes with summer. At the same time, dark forces, fears and anxieties, which dwell in us and with which people have dealt differently as part of traditional folk rituals and looked for positive energy, emerge every year. Dowsing, which is associated with water, evokes in Veronika Holcová strong memories of her father, who was a dowser. It is these memories that in the Altán Klamovka Gallery are combined with the history of the gallery - a neo-Gothic garden house. It is believed that people could refresh and wash up by the Praga spring. Also, people in the 19th century, when the garden house was built, believed in the healing effects of water. The Legend of Water exhibition thus reflects on these inspiring moments and points to the artist’s personal mythology, which is in harmony with the Klamovka Park. In connection with the local genius loci, Veronika Holcová presents two older paintings, Anima and Společník, which were made during her stay in Canada, but are still relevant in the new exhibition context as well. With their strong visual energy, they become a gateway to shedding the negative energy brought on by the last pandemic winter. They are the entrance to a new beginning, which is, however, guarded by dark forces in the background. The burbling of the stream is evoked by a site-specific installation where a blue-red ribbon invites the viewers to discover the gateway to the soul, which can be viewed as the source of life. The artist thus opens for us a path to a journey through dreamlike landscapes, while refining our visual alertness and reflection on art that provides space for calming down and mental cleansing. Let's fully immerse ourselves in the tradition of dowsing, combine a visit to Veronika Holcová's exhibition with an attempt at dowsing in Klamovka Park and imaginarily connect ourselves with our ancestors!
Veronika Holcová is an established Czech artist working in the CR and abroad. She graduated from the Prague Academy of Fine Arts and studied in Jitka Svobodová’s, Bedřich Dlouhý’s, Vladimír Skrepl’s and Vladimír Kokolia’s studios. She has created her own recognizable style, based on an intertwining of figurative and landscape motifs that take the viewer to a dreamlike environment full of fragile, almost surreal, figures against strongly imaginative landscapes. Her latest artwork has been influenced by her long stay in Ottawa, where she drew inspiration from Canadian nature.
The curatorial intent in 2021 is based on the current topics in art, such as sustainability in art, calming of the mind, minimization, a return to tradition and intergenerational dialogues of the young and middle generations. The Altán Klamovka Gallery will organize only five exhibitions with an emphasis on online documentation and a rich accompanying program. The gallery will also focus on the presentation of foreign artists and the deepening of cooperation with them.
Lenka Sýkorová