And the Next Day

Emma Balcarová, Šimon Chlouba,
Marika Krčmářová, Ljuba Šlechtová

15. 11. – 8. 12. 2024
curator: Robin Seidl

I am walking through the countryside, wandering aimlessly. I don't remember when I started, or why, and the landscape changes in front of my eyes. Entireties become details and I lose myself in the intricate texture, views of the landscape become objects. And the next day, it's as if I've crossed a stray root just outside the garden gate and the landscape changes again.

A feeling of wandering - of quiet and slow wandering, of deliberately getting lost. It is a feeling that allows us to perceive subtle changes around us and within ourselves, and gives us time. The works on display explore not only the landscape around us as a physical space, but more importantly the experience of time spent in that environment. In their works, each of the artists captures a certain type of change, a gradual transformation of the environment in which they move. The stray root is then the symbolic centre of the exhibition, and with each imaginary crossing of it, in this landscape of images, we slowly dive into another layer of detail in space and time. 

The exhibition And the Next Day is a loose continuation of the exhibition Becoming a Flower, which I prepared for the Jelení Gallery in the spring of this year. That exhibition explored the motif of the flower as a symbol of home, memories and man's relationship with nature.

Robin Seidl

Emma Balcarová

She studies at the Prague UMPRUM in the Glass Studio. Her work is often based on natural motifs and symbols and it connects the world of free art with glass design. She works with the medium of glass in unconventional ways, disrupting the usual smooth image of the structure of glass and working with a more natural organic shape. She likes to take inspiration from mythological themes.

Šimon Chlouba

He is graduating this year from the studio of Free Art 3 at UMPRUM in Prague. His work alternates between the disciplines of site-specific installation and painting. His works explore the duality between technological progress and its destructive consequences. His paintings warn against the depletion of nature and depict the transformation of landscape.

Marika Krčmářová

She studies at the Academy of Fine Arts (AVU) in Prague, in the studio of Painting 4. She is currently on a traineeship at the AVU's Painting 3 studio. In her paintings she delimits herself against the fast production in contemporary society. She uses textile patterns, giving them their lost meaning through her slow and consistent work.

Ljuba Šlechtová

She also studies in the studio of Free Art 3 at Prague‘s UMPRUM. In her work, Ljuba focuses on exploring the construct of the division between human and nature. She works with the medium of painting and installation. The motifs in her paintings include ambivalence, ambiguity and inner turmoil. Her work reflects feelings of sadness, loneliness and uprootedness - characteristic of the present time.

The program of the Jeleni Gallery is possible through kind support of Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, Prague City Council, State Fund of Culture of the Czech Republic, City District Prague 7, 
GESTOR – The Union for the Protection of Authorship
Media partners: ArtMap, artalk.cz, jlbjlt.net and ArtRevue