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The solo show of Mária Čorejová Standing Waters at Remont Gallery in Belgrade presents a selection from her latest drawing series Days of Anger (2015-2016), Brave World (2016-2017) and Oh Your God (2017-2018), together with the objects by architect Miriam Šebianová Sweet Home (2017). In her works, the artists continuously questions the traces of the persisting and the new dogmas within the neoliberal and neoconservative environment of the former Eastern Bloc.

Názov podujatia

Výstava

Miesto konania

Srbsko

Termín konania

12.06.2018 - 31.08.2018

Popis projektu

Mária Čorejová STANDING WATERS

Cooperation Miriam Šebianová

Curator Miroslava Urbanová

The solo show of Mária Čorejová Standing Waters at Remont Gallery in Belgrade presents a selection from her latest drawing series Days of Anger (2015-2016), Brave World (2016-2017) and Oh Your God (2017-2018), together with the objects by architect Miriam Šebianová Sweet Home (2017). In her works, the artists continuously questions the traces of the persisting and the new dogmas within the neoliberal and neoconservative environment of the former Eastern Bloc.

Mária continues to develop her authorial programme prevalently in the technique ink on paper. On the white surface of the paper sheet the objects are assembled in such constellations of which one exclusive interpretation would put us in danger of getting stuck in the shallows. However, she provides us with some anchors to spot an undistorted reflection of her critical input.

Days of Anger, referring with its title to the classic of Slovak literature, consist of representations of both everyday objects and universal symbols of our cultural circle, for example bread or boat. Things which are burnt, burning, flowing, or are drowning in themselves, produce the instant feeling of worry about the change of their state and/or state of matter. Mária adapts her technique – this time very soft pencil drawing and scratched black wax – so that she reaches more dramatic contrast, feeling of loss of security after being hit by imaginary lightning of anger.

Metal construction of Miriam's objects called Sweet Home, shaped as an archetypal house, delineates in the third dimension a certain physical and ideological space, in the similar way like Mária's solid, but still fluid drawing line. Borders of this space are interrupted with motifs from Mária's usual repertoire, for example balloon or animals, which are searching for their place in the framework of unclear borders between private and public space. Artists are inviting us to take a look at their relationship, its sweet ups and downs, its fragility similar to the sugar walls of one of these little mansions.

Christian symbolism and the church architecture emerge in Mária's œuvre regularly, last time in the series Stations of Crisis. In the newer Brave World the artist directs our gaze into the interior of sacral architecture: to the naves, transepts and chapels of the cloisters and cathedrals from Middle Ages. These are without doubt the most monumental material and artistic manifestations of the Christian tradition in Europe. She brings various strange objects and phenomena to these spaces and therefore disturbs the genre impression of the drawings. Indeed, these depictions of church interiors denote more metaphysical than physical space, but deprived of its divine aura represented by the light coming through the colourful glass windows. In these mute skeletons are the fragments of the secular world trapped in the iconic black matter/fluid. The artist shifts the discussion to the framework of thinking about systems (religious, social, cultural), about their borders, confrontations and overlaps. According to legends, at the beginning of the world there was light. And at the beginning of the art/painting there was a line drawn alongside the shadow.

Further, in the latest series Oh Your God appear various motifs from the older series on one sheet of paper - such as stuffed animal trophy, medieval church or ancient temple. They are carefully arranged in an unreal setting, though quoting well-known spaces. They create a labyrinth of references pointing back to the roots of our culture. These places and objects are seemingly struck and overgrown by expanding trees, when so-called nature confronts so-called culture. Their physical and thematic overlappings vary from the bloody deer decoration on the walls of Bratislava's castle through the associations such as that of the mythical wooden origin of the first architecture to the thematization of the unscrupulous wood harvesting fueled by greed in today's Slovakia.

What is often being highlighted, is a certain surreal impression of Mária's. This can be observed not only in the treating of the picture plane and perspective, but first of all in the strange ensambles of places and objects. However, these predominantly non-figurative groups are an echo to current societal events. Mária's drawings are in this sense mimicking the surreal feeling of today's world of fake news, the rise of far-right and bigotry in Central European region and are to certain extent acting as the exact illustrations to the distorted history of the region. 

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