Exhibition Intervention Jindra Viková: Who Am I?

Ceramics as an artistic medium integrates sculptural and painterly approaches, meaning shaping and subsequent surface finishing. This is what Jindra Viková has always enjoyed about ceramics. Furthermore, interdisciplinarity suits her open approach to ceramics – she continuously integrated other materials and performed technological experiments. It was precisely her unorthodox approach, transcending narrow disciplinary boundaries, that earned the artist international attention, confirmed by numerous awards in world competitive exhibitions and symposia. Only seemingly on the periphery or in the shadow of ceramic objects, Jindra Viková's intimate and obsessive drawings continuously emerged, to which this exhibition is primarily dedicated. For Jindra Viková, drawings do not merely play the role of recording ideas or studies for three-dimensional works, but are truly autonomous artworks that ultimately have the same validity and significance. They utilize all the specific advantages that drawing inherently possesses – for example, speed of execution and material undemandingness. Paper suitable for drawing surrounds us in its various forms and guises almost everywhere.

This is evidenced by Jindra Viková's drawings on "sick bags" pulled out of a seat pocket mid-flight, or the letterhead of an international ceramic association distributed among delegates of a conference she was attending. Drawing fills a long moment, if you will, boredom, during a long intercontinental flight or during monotonous conference speeches. You draw, which is evidently also the case for Jindra Viková, when you don't know what to do with your hands. You draw, draw, and draw. Informed by the theory and practice of the surrealists, in the case of these drawings, we can speak of semi-automatic drawings, i.e., creations only partly controlled by consciousness or fulfilling the artist's initial intention. The unconscious brings forth unexpected, provocative, often overtly erotic constellations, certainly a welcome morsel for a depth psychoanalyst. Even without this equipment, it can be argued that these drawings let viewers into the artist's mind and emotional world. After this experience, we can help Jindra Viková answer the titular question: "Who am I?" Or just enjoy the bravura of her drawing, which is no small thing.

The exhibition intervention is part of the celebrations of the artist's significant life anniversary. Simultaneously, a commemorative book, Jindra Viková: Who Am I?, is being published by the Brno-based publishing house Stará pošta. The book can be purchased in the gallery shop on the ground floor of Pražákův palác.