Veronika Holcová: The Hermit and Love

Emil Filla Gallery in Ústí nad Labem
16. 9 − 5. 11. 2023, opening 15. 9. at 6 pm

Artist: Veronika Holcová
Curator: Lenka Sýkorová
Photo: Jiří Dvořák

The divide between day and night accompanies man throughout his whole life. To interpret the state of being as an interplay of the heart, reason and will, we can use as a metaphor a sailor or a wanderer representing reason and sailing or walking through a landscape shaped by the currents of the sea or the horizons of the landscape. We can picture these currents as the feeling heart and the sails and rudder as the will to set out on a journey. Veronika Holcová's artwork is a combination of landscape and figurative motifs. She presents us with dreamy landscapes that open up to us at the time between day and night or by being present, where we are able to experience a given moment and place with a certain release and openness toward inner worlds. In Veronika Holcova's artwork, we can imaginatively sail through the inner landscapes of the soul.

The exhibition The Hermit and Love opens up Plato's interpretation of art as mimesis. An imitation of an imitation of reality, of nature and, consequently, of our dreamscapes that permeate us. Just like we can be accompanied by a wanderer on our journey, the wanderer in this exhibition is symbolized by a figure in the painting Reflection of the Sun, who invites us into a so-called cave of shadows, which is lined with the paintings The Hermit and Love. Behind the curtain, which represents a subjective view of the world, we can see new possibilities of perception, where we interpret our skull as a subjective experience of reality. That is why there is also a series of drawings called Brush Wash Drawings. Veronika Holcová created them after a day of work in her studio and they represent a kind of purification ritual and an exercise of the hand after concentrated work. They are a release of inner worlds and can evoke our inner landscapes and symbols that open up even when dreaming.

The exhibition The Hermit and Love presents Veronika Holcová's older paintings and drawings and current artwork from a new perspective on her artwork. Abstract paintings, which both draw us in and push us away, invite us on a journey of new spatial experience. These are primarily the paintings Amulet and Pansy. Their energy is directed inwards and outwards. But their common element is the circular formation, which can be interpreted as a pearl and permeates the entire exhibition. If the pearl is to symbolize Christ, purity and truth, we can then see it as an absolute being (truth). In Plato's interpretation of the cave as our skull, i.e. subjectivity, every shadow can be understood as a reflection of absolute being (truth) and it is up to us to discover it on our life's journey using our heart, our reason and our will.

Veronika Holcová graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and studied in the studios of Jitka Svobodová, Bedřich Dlouhý, Vladimír Skrepl and Vladimír Kokolia. She has developed a recognizable style that is based on blending figurative and landscape motifs, which take us into a dreamlike environment full of fragile, almost surreal, figures against the backdrop of highly imaginative landscapes. She is a well-established Czech artist both in the Czech Republic and abroad.

Lenka Sýkorová