DNA: Divine Nature Awakens Exhibition Catalogue, Prague 2017
Visual Code of Nature - Lanyi versus Zelinka by V.B.Skid
Faithful to its mission of presenting and supporting top contemporary visual art from Central and Easter Europe, - THINK + feel Contemporary gallery launched its inaugural European project- an exhibition under the title DNA: Divine Nature Awakens (Enigma Vitae) on the sumptuous premises of one of the most beautiful Baroque palaces in Europe - Clam-Gallas Palace in Prague.
The exhibition brought together works by renowned Slovak artists Matúš Lányi (b. 1981) and Jan Zelinka (b. 1978) both of whom use nature in their creations, and for whom concepts of the natural juxtaposed with the divine order of time and life are central to their artistic expression.
For over a decade Christian iconography and images of faith have been the central motif of Matúš Lányi’s art. In some of his earlier works the religious imagery is shown through the lens of consumerist society: Windows, 2005-7, Ground Plans, 2009-10, IHS, 2013-16, etc. In his most recent series: Fragmentation, 2015 and Hard Drives 2016, the representation takes on a more abstract, digitized look. Aligned data-like fragments made up of flower petals and tree leaves are spread in linear fashion on oversized canvases, reminiscent of genetic mapping. These works are not paintings in the traditional sense, but rather displays or iconic “planes”. The resulting compositions are the artist's response to the neo-Darwinian theories of Richard Dawkins and present our lives as the proliferation and organization of genetic data without any deeper meaning.
Jan Zelinka’s non-classical sculpture could be defined as the 3D record of people and animals and their artistic reanimation. The artist prefers to work with unique natural materials: peat, clay, or even sheep excrement. In his most recent series Requiem for Organisms (2010-17), he incorporated carcasses of animals* he found in nature: a cat, a fox, a snake and a squirrel. He fashioned distinctive leaded boxes like lofty sarcophagi to symbolically elevate the status of these “lowly” creatures.
When working with deceased animals (series In Search for the Essence - Cow, Horse, Deer, 2013-16), the artist pours plaster into the reassembled, sewn together, animal skin and breathes new life into them. Zelinka has also developed his own negative modeling techniques such as making body impressions in clay and casting the same into concrete. This method produces unaltered impressions of faces, bodies, or concrete "portraits", including his own family (Head I-III, 2010-14, Family-Document, 2015). The artist thus creates a sculptural record of the rhythm of life, examining man’s place in the pyramid of life, his relationship to other beings as well as to himself, his own life and death and nature.
The Matúš Lányi and Jan Zelinka exhibition in Prague provides a visual record of these Slovak artists’ perception of the contemporary world and nature, the passage of time and the mystery of life, the "visual DNA" of genetic and cultural information and endless travel of genes and memes.
* No animals were hurt in any way or killed for the purposes of or in the process of creating of any artworks featured at the exhibition or in this catalog
Czech TV prime time program Udalosti v kulture (CT Art) coverage of the art exhibition DNA: Divine Nature Awakens featuring Slovak artists Matus Lanyi and Jan Zelinka that took place in June-July 2017 at Clam-Gallas palace, Prague. The exhibition feature was broadcast on July 5, 2017 on CTV1 channel at 20:00.