curatorial collaboration: Františka Orságová, Petr Kamenický
Reverie is a waking creative activity of the mind, during which the dreamer brings images to life. This kind of daydreaming interlinks two depths that are reflected in the echoes between the being of the world
and the being of the dreamer. Veronika Holcová dreams her world into the existence of her paintings.
A work of art is conceived from stimuli engendered from the exchange between the most recent state of being and its most remote potentiality. All at once, something has burst out from the depths of time and space – what happened?
Recollecting past burdens turns into apprehension. In her work, the painter wields the power to bring close that which is remote, make static the changeable, leave the obscured open to the imagination.
If Holcová’s artworks make the viewer somewhat uneasy, it is because of their ability to induce a state of retrospection. They induce remembering all as well as prescience. They transcend individual memory. The viewer never gets a glimpse of what lies at the very bottom. They dream their own.
The dreamer of the world is the person whose dreams revolve not only around them, but the world in its entirety. Reverie does not entail detachment from reality – quite the opposite.
Time gallops around the head of the dreamer…
The paintings are distinguished by being constantly in progress, a conscious deepening of internal landscapes. The deep formed from an abstract smear is something original, conception establishing meaning. The artist highlights themes that are revealed in the painting, preserving them for the viewer and concealing those that are her own. What seems evident is inverted into the negative space of the painting.
The dreamer comes to, surprised to have received the image of a painting, enthralled by the semblance of complete knowledge. Their dream does not merely wonder aimlessly in the core of their soul, rather embracing the world in waves of visions, allowing it to overflow into the dreaming of another.
Knowledge radiates through the (sub)conscious, a reflection of the true state of the world…
When a visitor turns around and looks elsewhere, part of their knowledge remains in their gaze. The giving of names is one of the prerogatives of the possible elements of the world.
The artist’s drawings are an accommodation of momentary inspiration. Marks of brushes and colours give shape to ephemeral dreaming. The hand leads the head towards a relaxation of the lived experience. Or is the head leading the hand? Who in fact takes charge of the concrete appearance of the fantastical chimeras? For a moment natural vision retreats from the act and has no other place to go but into the sphere of the magical and miraculous where the influence of the painter’s skill reaches imperceptibly.
At this exhibition, Veronika Holcová lays open her creative universe. Juxtaposing them side by side, she mirrors two of the currents of her work which swirl around a single head. The Galerie Pitevna exhibition represents the space of the painter’s dual-domicile;
the duality of a single being.
She moves between focused deliberation and emotion. She fills a vase with her own connotations together with the dreaming of the other. Is the vase full?