Veronika
Remak
References
LAND/SCAPE
The landscape in all its possible variations and its transformations as portrayed in classical painting has become Veronika Remak Molatová’s subject matter. The ability of sensitive perception from a painter’s point of view — her perception of the character and mood of the landscape, which are vehicles of inspiration and which result from geographic location, altitude, light conditions, season of the year, part of the day, and even the influence of civilization, or, on the other hand, a need to celebrate through painting places untouched by civilization, all of this comprises the material the author has been working with for some time. And it appears that neither the landscape itself, let alone the author, show any signs of weariness in the competition of “nature vs. artist.” In the words of sport — mutual passes fly back and forth, there is always something to surprise the opponent with, and there’s still willingness for adequate response.
Ms. Molatová commands the skill of artistic transcription of the subject matter with her very own sense of generous harmony based on the principle of colour. She works purposefully with paint; the way she alternates distinctive parts of the painting, placing light scumbling in contrast to impasto painting, enhances the vivid impression of her canvases, a sense of motion and a feeling of depth, and a sensation of infinite space. She has the ability of applying beautiful details to the benefit of the whole.
PAVEL HOLAS
Veronika Molatová creates landscapes, which at first sight may seem a very classical and often interpreted theme. However, hers is a quite particular approach, not only regarding her attitude towards theme but mainly in the way she approaches the landscape. She shows an act of painting landscapes, which combines direct visual perception, experience, and “construction.” The restitution of the original experience or perception is not a return to it, rather an exposing of its meaning. This, however, presumes that Ms. Molatová responds to the landscape through her painting and suggests that her response apparently comprises two dimensions: on the one hand, it is directed at the landscape to which she responds, on the other hand it is directed to the one who responds. A painting thus created attracts the viewer because it is disconcerting: it is a landscape (concrete, even more so since Ms. Molatová also uses photographs in her work) but it is more than a landscape because the artist wants to touch something inside of her in the landscape (but not by the means of the landscape). Thus a strange space of multiplying echoes comes into being. The response comes in the form of an echo but here and there, quite unexpectedly, something else appears in this seemingly confined harmony of voices. The painting changes from iconic — that is, representational, to indexical — that is referring to or touching something, leading our eyes to something in, but not on it. It is not a re-presentation of experience, rather evidence, which re-creates the experience anew in a singular way.
It seems to me that exactly because it is a matter of bearing witness and because involved here is something difficult to capture in an experience, Veronika Molatová chose inconspicuous methods in order to avoid her paintings to attract attention by their external effects. That is why her landscapes are almost “ordinary” landscapes. However, their atmosphere similarly to the minimal artistic intervention in the paintings, appear to aim at directing the viewer’s attention to the motion, in which the interior becomes the exterior and vice versa, as well as at the discovering of fleeting moments when something appears that is neither one or the other.
I very much appreciate the works of Ms. Molatová for their inconspicuous character that comes hand in hand with a premeditation of the choice of means, and perhaps certain discretion in places where there is a threat of possible monumentalization and play with effects.
Yet, Veronika Molatová’s landscapes are apparently everything but classical landscapes: they are simply different.
MIROSLAV PETRICEK
