ZUZANA KALINAKOVA
NEW YORK PAPAYAS
ATENEO SALA PRADO
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Catalog text MAGDALENA FELICE
(Art historian. Since 2004, she has been a research associate at the Museum of Modern Art Carinthia in Klagenfurt, Austria, active in various institutions and also working independently in the art and cultural field )
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Zuzana Kaliňaková draws the inspiration for her recent works on paper from memories of her stays in New York City over the past few years. What interests her is the deeply personal experience of the metropolis—its rhythms and visual details—not representative cityscapes.
In large sheets painted with acrylic and mounted on chipboard, each dominated by a single background color and overlaid with white forms and lines in a net-like structure, Zuzana Kaliňaková captures the eruptive and pulsating atmospheres of entire districts—such as Manhattan, SoHo, or Harlem.
In smaller works, where the artist combines various colors and techniques on paper, her focus is on felt and observed details. The reduced, abstract compositions made up of cipher-like colored shapes and linear markings, sometimes combined with collaged pieces of paper, reveal the essential atmospheres and visual impressions experienced by Zuzana Kaliňaková.
In combination with titles such as “Red Root,” “Orange Dot,” “Ketchup,” “Silver Shadow,” “Street Rain,” or “Windy Walk,” these works crystallize from memory into the present as poetic-musical compositions.
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ABOVE THE SOUL
GALLERY II.
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Catalogue text Doc. PETER KOCÁK, MA, PhD
(Prešov University, Faculty of Arts Graphic Artist, Calligrapher, Painter, Curator, Collector
Holder of numerous international art awards)
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Slovak painter Zuzana Kaliňaková, after several successful solo exhibitions abroad, now presents her latest works. Compared to her earlier pieces, I see a great leap forward in the quality of original artistic expression—in the precision of conveying her message about the world and her Soul.
Kaliňaková’s works are artistic, but not in the sense of l’art pour l’art. On the contrary—they are thoroughly artistic in their depiction of what is hard to depict: that is, the soul of art. Essential art. She works on her very original and by now strongly recognizable style with unwavering focus and persistence. There is a determined, yet charming effort to achieve her unique, perfect expression. Her art will speak to every sensitive perceiver. As we can see from the titles of her works, her inspiration is everywhere—outside and inside.
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In the Slovak art scene, Kaliňaková’s work is a solitaire. It stands apart from any prevailing fashion, trend, style, ideology, or -isms. That is her greatest asset—authenticity and truthfulness. Innovation is her natural and primary identifying mark. In her works, we do not find even remotely similar features to those of her generation. That’s interesting—and at the same time undeniably appealing. It’s also worth noting that, unlike many contemporary Slovak female artists who create programmatic feminist art, her work bears no such signs. There’s no need to separate itself from the universe of art into some exclusive position meant solely and exclusively for women. Quite the opposite—her pieces are an excellent example of genuinely feminine art—in the best sense of the word. Feminine sensitivity, intuition, and emotional depth.
Today, we feel an ever-increasing urgency for the primordial feminine force in our information-saturated, digital society. The need for an original creative power—natural, innate, yet mysterious and wonderfully secretive at the same time.
NEW YORK PAPAYAS
MUSEUM OF MODERN AND CONTEMPORERY ART KOROSKA (KGLU)
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Curated by MARKO KOSAN
(Born 1961. Art-historian, publicist, art-critic, essayist, columnist, writes reviews for many Slovenian and international newspapers and art magazines. Member of the Slovenian Association of Art Critics and AICA. Curator at Fine Art Galley Slovenj Gradec, Slovenia -director from 2008 to 2013)
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The works of Rudi Benétik and Zuzana Kaliňakova were created as a reverberation of experiences during three brief, successive visits to the central metropolis of the modern globalized world between 2011 and 2013. The shared title “New York Papayas” spontaneously summarizes the semantically incomprehensible and contextless words from a yellowed, torn poster they came across while strolling through the Chelsea district of New York. It symbolically underscores Benétik’s playful and previously recognizable way of seeing through images. Zuzana Kaliňakova joined him in the intertwining of this shared narrative; in the works of both artists, a distinctive pictorial story unfolds with indicative titles—but without direct or easily recognizable references to the depicted subjects.
Although this story may seem enigmatic at first glance, it actually sharpens our usual perceptions of the world as we know it and draws our attention to valuable details—details that we so often and carelessly overlook in the rush and greed of daily life, even though they are there all the time, around us and with us, subconsciously filling us with energy that is essential for everyday survival.
Rudi Benétik and Zuzana Kaliňakova have the ability to pause at the most seemingly insignificant miracle of creation and elevate it into a symbol of vibrant life. When viewing their works, we get the impression that the creative act of interpreting the world is already largely complete at the moment the exciting image is captured on the retina of their eyes—and in the next instant, it transforms into a spiritual experience with such visual intensity that it can be transferred to the white surface of drawing paper.
The scattered fragments of subtle visual detection resemble intuitive pictograms on the pages of an intimate artistic diary—one that is infused with the organic glow of the mysterious pulse of life in the metropolis of New York, where two individual stories intertwine into one. Along the way, numerous sketches were made, which later, through the reflection of travel impressions in their home studio in Jaunstein, formed a kaleidoscopic mosaic of the invisible pulse of New York—as the two artists experienced and felt it. Their eyes, the pencil tip, and at times just the chalk dust on their fingertips, serve the artistic recording of fleeting, sometimes entirely ephemeral and trivial events.
What truly interests them are chance situations—“frozen actions”, as Rudi Benétik calls them—in which the spontaneity of a just-passed moment is captured through an undefined pictorial composition of numerous quite ordinary and everyday objects. These appear disordered but are in fact highly precise, telling rich stories about New York restaurants, jazz clubs, and shops, the pulsating glow of neon signs, and the hidden glimpses into remote corners of so-called “back alleys”, the roar of traffic chaos, and the muffled crunch of sand on the paths of Central Park—all observed through their skilled voyeuristic gaze.
But you won’t find the skyscrapers of Manhattan’s famous skyline or any other stereotypical, emblematic images of the Big Apple. Instead, only sensual fragments of visual impressions from spontaneous wanderings along the undefinable edge of conscious and unconscious discovery of everyday situations are revealed—part of a search for self, in pursuit of a balanced understanding of the world.
The sensitive compositions and forms that speak to us with a shy secret from Benétik’s and Kaliňakova’s images have been ruthlessly pushed to the margins of our consciousness by today’s age of pompous and shocking electronic imagery, which continuously glides before our bewitched eyes on screens. It seems that only those who attentively listen to the subtle pulse of creation are still able to reach the original expressions of tangible, material, and spiritual life.
The intense expressive power of the works by Rudi Benétik and Zuzana Kaliňakova constantly echoes the typical, disjointed and breathless storytelling style of a child trying to describe the thrilling experience of a school trip or Sunday outing. Although we may struggle to fit the child’s flood of words into a coherent story, we are touched by its directness and sincere emotional openness—and so we listen with pleasure.
ABOVE THE SOUL
GALLERY II:
Curated by SIBYLLE VON HALEM
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Zuzana Kaliňáková stammt aus der Slowakei, sie lebt und arbeitet seit 2009 in Kärnten und in Bratislava Sie ist Malerin, Zeichnerin, Objektkünstlerin – und noch Einiges über diese Begriffe hinaus, das sich nur schwer definieren lässt.
Ihre Bilder sind Objekte, sie verweigern den herkömmlichen rechteckigen Rahmen und vor allem verweigern sie die tradierte Sicht auf und in ein Bild als Blick durch ein „Fenster“.
Schon lange bevor ein „Fenster“ in unserer Wahrnehmung ganz alltäglich etwas virtuelles bedeutete - das Dialog-Fenster am Computer drängt sich hier auf - war das Gemälde, vor allem das gerahmte Ölbild, mit einem „Fenster in die Wirklichkeit“ gleichgesetzt, das den Betrachter verleiten sollte, sich vom Hier und Jetzt zu trennen und in die neue (also virtuelle) Realität des Bildes einzutreten.
Genau das wird in diesen Werken aber unmöglich gemacht: die meisten Bilder haben keinen Rahmen oder treten über ihn hinaus, durchbrechen die üblichen Grenzen des Bildes.
Viele ihrer Werke sind Collagen – auf verschiedenen Papieren mit unterschiedlichen Farben gemalt, gezeichnet, aneinander gefügt, teils überlagert, geklebt, genäht – Untergrund, Hintergrund und Verfahren sind wandelbar, was durchaus auch sinnbildlich zu verstehen ist.
Wo liegt die Basis, was wäre, wenn die Anordnung dieser Bestandteile eine andere wäre?
Was ist, wenn ich woanders bin, was, wenn ich anders wäre als ich bin?
Das Papier wirkt fein und verletzlich wie Haut, das stoffliche daran geht einem nahe, ob nun formgewordene Empfindungen, menschliche Körperteile oder mutmaßliche Schriftzeichen abgebildet sind oder miteinander assoziiert werden; die Bestandteile des Bildes gehen eine Verbindung ein, die haptisch erfahrbar bleibt. Auch ist nicht alles Papier, hin und wieder wird es handfest: als „Collage“ mit Holzstücken wird das Bild tatsächlich zum räumlichen Objekt.
Es gibt durchaus auch rechteckige Bilder auf einem einzigen Stück Papier.
Nur findet hier ein ähnlicher Prozess statt: das „Sujet“ bleibt nicht gehorsam in der Mitte der Bildfläche, wie man es gewohnt ist, es drängt gegen den Rand, verweigert die Begrenzung, geht über sich hinaus. Ist es ein Fragment, geht das „eigentliche“ Bild außerhalb des Papiers noch weiter? Was ist das „Ungesehene“?
Wie wichtig ist das, was uns nicht gezeigt wird: ist es vielleicht das Wesentliche? Wie so oft im Erleben des eigenen Seins hat man das Gefühl, dass sich ganz kurz vor der Erkenntnis ein Schleier über die Wahrnehmung legt, das Ziel bleibt verborgen.
Die Titel der Werke sind oft aufschlussreich: „Das Paar“ zeigt zwei Formen, von denen eine nur am Rand angedeutet, also eigentlich ganz „entzogen“ ist und unerfahrbar bleibt, auch „Die Edelsteine“ sind einer plus ein Fragment, fast wie ein Splitter, eine Scherbe.
Ebenso stellt sich in manch eindeutig menschlicher Abbildung die Frage: männlich, weiblich - oder beides zusammen = Mensch? Bildet sich das Wesentliche in der Wahrnehmung vielleicht prinzipiell aus mehreren Fragmenten und nicht aus einer „vollständigen“ Abbildung?
Wie weit kann das Bild eine Idee, eine Empfindung weiter führen, über die Grenzen des sprachlich erfassbaren hinaus?
Der Fragenkatalog, den die Werke von Zuzana Kaliňáková aufwerfen, könnte noch um vieles erweitert werden - und auch hier sind die Fragen spannender und ergiebiger als alle möglichen Antworten. Das ist die Aufgabe der Kunst - sie entsteht im Geist des Betrachters, im Grenzbereich zwischen den Fragen und den Antworten.
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JASNA KOCUVAN
(Curator, Dolenjska Museum, Novo Mesto, Slovenia)
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The works of Zuzana Kaliňáková explore a specific meditative and ascetic urban energy with a touch of mysticism. They reveal to us a subtle visual language that, above all through light effects and color harmony, enables unique aesthetic and spiritual experiences. They lead us into a world of desires, into a space of feelings or dreams that the artist experienced while observing the real world through her own perception and captured in memory.
These memories—of aesthetic impulses from traveling the world, of intimate encounters with surrounding architecture, and of the energy of life in specific countries—are brought by the artist into her paintings as spiritual landscapes, which are then transformed into entirely new, rounded aesthetic wholes.
The painterly impulse arises here from a sensitive perception of architectural segments in nature, in which she is able to uncover hidden beauty. Her emotional experience appears far more important than rational analysis, and it is the transformation of what is seen that ultimately determines the concept and realization of the motif.
In some of the works from the series New York Variations, the compositional structure is gently divided by architectural elements—sometimes subtle and transparent—which serve as catalysts for the color composition (as in an expansion of the source of color). The viewer might attempt narrative associations and perhaps even recognize an organized city layout or landscape elements. This simple drawing, expressed through line and movement, is mostly softly curved, without sharp corners. In this way, the artist creates narrative elements that often unconsciously transform into symbols. The overall effect is that of a landscape of traces—a view of life. These depictions of invisible life are essentially images of a meditative gaze and hiddenness, through which the artist matures in solitude, guided by central asceticism and a warning about the meaning of silence, which we too often ignore in everyday life.
With a rich palette of colors—from pinkish, grey, earthy, grassy, to black tones—always in gentle shades that subtly flicker within their texture, she expresses the inner emotional world of the artist. Her use of color is based on the fragility of subtle tones. She does not treat color as a material substance but rather sees it as a bearer of spiritual dimensions. This is why the atmosphere of her paintings is so deeply rooted in mood.
This wide range of feelings builds her lyrical painterly world—usually imbued with a soft touch, sometimes slightly melancholic, and in some works deeply immersed in depth and cold darkness. The paintings reveal Zuzana Kaliňáková as a sensitive aesthete who, within the physical reality of nature, has uncovered an infinite associative space—a space of inner peace. Her sensitivity to the diversity of the world’s landscapes and the lives of different cultures created by humankind is expressed through the diversity and richness of her visual language and through the works she creates.
In her paintings, everything is captured in close connection with nature, with the meaning of life, and with lived experience.
Strongly essential, inherent, …
PhDr. EVA TROJANOVÁ
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About graphic Monstrum:
Aggresive phenomenons and state of todays world, she perceive as an conflict of a animalous fundamentals of a man and acquired moral and etic norms of behavuour. Her concept is remarkable not only with its theme but also its treatment. Graphics of unusual sizes she compones to a one large-sized unit, which is maybe derived from altar paintings or celebrative triumphal archs. She recalls herself in its concept woodcuts of Albrecht Durer. But the original inspiration she turn 180 grad. Its not about fame naider homage to the big of this world, but about their failure.
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About objects:
As a material she choosed to use souvenirs or sacral objects, which she gave new meaning by its intervension and recreation. Its the proces of apropriation , of pulling out the object from an original context. Mainly it appears the thoughts of conflicts, agression and expansion and conflict of a idea and reality. She performs-serve the theme in ironical and mockery level as a deformed thoughts and intentions. Doll with the killing- look has incodet conflict of the specious innocence and agresion. Few more objects are using religious context for transposition of aktual themes...
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