white unicorn gallery in klatovy

21. 1. - 26. 3. 2017

Zdena Kolečková, Just a Story

History, painting, and history resemble each other and seem so much alike that when you write history you paint and when you paint you compose.

                                                                                                  Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra

Just like Cervantes's quote from his novel Persiles and Sigismunda, the art of Zdena Kolečková (born 1969 in Ústí nad Labem) exists on the interstice of or in symbiosis with multiple genres and disciplines. The Metaphysics of Loss, an exhibition of selected past works at the White Unicorn Gallery in Klatovy, is both an artistic statement by an artist who has spent more than two decades recording intimate aspects of her life, and a field study of the geographical and sociocultural region once known as the Sudetenland. The exhibition's narrative line as sketched out by the presented works is shaped by objective commentary as well as more subjective self-analytical reflections of the experiences and suppressed memories of a child growing up in the harsh north Bohemian border region, the impressions of a young person euphorically embracing the hopes associated with the new social paradigm after 1989, and a mature woman looking back at her past as she follows current political developments with a sense of fear and concern. In her compelling monochrome canvases, pseudo-documentary photographic cycles, and subtle installation projects, Zdena Kolečková painstakingly attempts to offer a critical summary of euphoric hopes and frequent doubts in order to rehabilitate the cleansing and constructive potential of all our past losses.

Video Václav Vojta

Photos Jiří Strašek