Eva Činčalová: Surfaces

Eva Činčalová’s works are based on well-known genres such as portrait, still life or landscape. She creates in an area of seemingly realistic depiction, but at the same time subtly questions whether what we are watching is truly real. One of the reasons for our slight uncertainty is a confrontation of traditional painting subjects and techniques with digital media processes. Many of her previous works dealt particularly with an experience with technical image record which was manifested mainly in the composition of the subject, cropping of the scene or soft focus, which were subsequently transferred to a painting medium. In her series of landscapes presented at the Surfaces exhibition, she almost transcends the aesthetics of digitally captured image of reality towards its digital remastering, which creates a brand-new reality. These new media processes are reintegrated in large-format paintings on canvas. Besides combining components into a new whole, the author uses raw canvas, a negative form of painting. However, the composition of this canvas in the structure of a landscape is reincarnated to a bizarrely coloured water, sky or rocks, while its unique colours and specific texture evoke unnatural sharpness of a synthetic computer-generated image. Činčalová uses processes similar to graphic programmes in the creation of her paintings – she picks parts of the real model to filter, glue together and layer on a non-illusive natural base. The result is some kind of a painter’s augmented reality which enriches the real environment by virtual, thus non-existent, but potentially possible components. This is why a seemingly peaceful landscape disturbs the viewer. The absence of people evokes purity and intactness but also intensifies the feeling of unreality and dream-like quality of the entire scene, which is enhanced by a suggestive accompanying essay by Michal Havran, floating in individual lines in space.

Jana Babušiaková

Location: Danubiana, Čunovo, Slovakia
Date: until 3 October 2021
Start: 10:00 – 18:00
Admission: 10 €

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