Jolana Škachová, Jitka Petrášová

The summer exhibition at Spot Gallery in August presents a selection of works by two recent graduates of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague – Jitka Petrášová (1981) and Jolana Škachová (1998). Diploma theses are usually a moment of reflection on one's studies to date and a significant turning point in both one's creative work and life in general. The transition from finishing school to starting work is separated by the "last vacation," a period of accelerated personal transformation in which many conflicting events occur simultaneously, awakening rapid sequences of melancholic states and insistent promises, a transformation in which sweet timelessness disappears. One horizon closes so that another can open. This taking stock is also evident in the themes and subjects that appear in the paintings and drawings of both artists. The works of Jitka Petrášová and Jolana Škachová are different in many ways. Spontaneously vital, colorful paintings alongside subdued, layered drawings. Introspective probes into family history alongside explorations of the ambiguous interface between static objectivity and dynamic experience of time and space.

While Jitka Petrášová sees the world as an enchanting, exotic garden, in which, however, one can encounter shady corners full of absurd deformations, grotesque anomalies, and poisonous vegetation that disturb the clarity of mind, Jolana Škachová, full of concentration, immerses herself in the interstice of vision and perception, which she capitalizes on in a newly discovered dreamlike morphology. For Petrášová, the "garden" is a metaphor for family and social togetherness, in which traces and imprints of the past overlap.