ARTIST STATEMENT

My work revolves mainly around the exploration of the photographic image and its relationship to the space. My diploma project has been crucial for my work as it was my first bigger photographic series and my interest in photography as new reality and its spatial potential, which I started to work with at that time, are still relevant for my practice. I often utilize images which are archetypal or stereotypical representation of certain themes or meanings and which seemingly don’t leave much space for alternative interpretations. I build stage for them and present them with new roles. A certain movement comes forth from this play, a shift between the dimension of a collective mythology or generally given scope of thinking and individual subjective experiencing of reality. In this context, I like to mention the phrase To be restless in one's frame.

My inspirational sources lie in many levels, from everyday, real life experience and observation through internet space and social media to history of art. I consider art practice as the way of deeper processing of the reality and personal experience. Slovak National Gallery has just opened the group show Useful Photography, where I participate with the selection of my works. As the exhibition text says, the show present photography as a tool, suitable for a wide range of use in contemporary art practice and is mapping the response of artists working with photography to the digital technology era in last 10 – 15 years. Despite contemporary ever-presence of photography, its devaluation and in context of new realities of VR - maybe its obsolescence, I consider it as very lively and useful medium and I like the challenges and possibilities it can still bring.

I am interested in work with the perception and imagination. According to Roland Barthes, photography is neither an image nor reality. It is completely new entity. Crucial moment of my work is dealing with the space within photography. The final outcomes are usually 2D prints, but in fact they comprehend constructed space – new reality that can not be touched. I am interested in newly built imagery and in possibilities of emotional resonance of the depicted. In last years, formally, my concentration is directed at the play with material in the context of photography and at the sculptural potential of photographic scene. Even though I work with formal analysis of the photographic medium, it is not the only aim or the theme of my research. I am attracted to possibility of building my own platforms where I can give image and object represented new freedom, and where I can deal with the themes I am currently interested in.

Process of the work starts with collection of notes and new ideas, snappy photo notes, which I concentrate in inspirational folders, and the project usually grows from there gradually. For preparation and research internet sources are crucial. The themes usually appear naturally, or cumulate for a longer time - As it was with my ongoing project For every high there is a low, dealing with contemporary triumphalism present in society, where I was strongly affected by years spent in London.

When thinking about the future of my practice, I would like to think about the photography as about spatial medium, complex intermedial platform, possible dynamic interface. I like to perceive it as process, strategy in perception of the reality and in dealing with imagery in contemporary art. In simplified scheme, I talk about the shift of photography to moving image, spatial image, installation or performance, while I am attracted to work with all phases of this motion. In this trajectory, I would like to research photography, which does not lock the reality under its surface, but is becoming permeable membrane. Photographic framing is becoming strategy of perception and dealing with reality and does not have to result in actual printed photograph.