Blanka Němcová

The artists’ work focuses on themes of transformation, memory and material as a carrier of stories and experience. Through materials such as geotextiles, clay and painting canvas, we follow a rhythm that is not linear but cyclical – layered and constantly renewing. Like samsara itself: a cycle of life, death and rebirth, in which each transformation is also a return to the beginning – to the body, the soil and collective memory.

At a time when we live in an environment overwhelmed by synthetic substances, accelerated production and alienation from original resources, these works offer an alternative rhythm. The time-consuming handmade processes the artists choose are not just a poetic gesture, but an active political decision. Through the material, they turn to fundamental questions: how do we perceive the transience of our own existence in a world that we threaten with our indifference? The soil from which we emerged can remain and regenerate itself – even without us.

The exhibition also opens up the question of how to break out of the cycle of recurring crises – ecological, social and personal. From a Buddhist perspective, samsara represents not only the cycle of life, but also attachment to unconscious action. A possible answer is bodhi – a state of awakening, recognition of context and acceptance of responsibility, which in the Christian tradition can be likened to rebirth or inner transformation, leading to awareness, turning and active acceptance of responsibility for one’s own life and the world around us. Artistic processes based on attention to material, place and time thus become not only an expression of care for the world, but also a call to transform the way we act in it. To step out of the cycle is not to abandon the world, but to begin to create it more consciously – with a respect that transcends individual experience.

What connects them is the natural element of fire, thanks to which their unique works are created. Blanka Němcová chose the path of fire ten years ago, when this exceptional woman began creating ceramics, first in Prague and later in Levín, a town known for its pottery in the České Středohoří Mountains. She finds inspiration in the Levín mountains and the Mediterranean coast in southern France, which are very close to her heart. The modeling technique came intuitively through her inner voice, and although she is a successful specialist in the field of pharmacy, her desire to create became stronger. As she herself says, it all started with one point on which she focused. Fascinated by that one point where her objects begin and end, she materializes movement in a spiral with clay and firing using fire, which she maintains herself in her garden in Levín. When modeling, she does not focus too much on controlling the shape and gives rise to so-called “ovoids,” as she calls her impressive objects. They are tangible evidence of a connection to the pure origins of art, i.e., letting the artist’s energy speak through them and being guided by it, even though the meaning and result of the creation are not fully known.

Richard Nestler is an established painter who studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in Milan Knížák’s studio from 2006 to 2012. He now devotes himself to large-format charcoal drawings on paper, in which he combines his inner view of the world with its civilizational development. Imaginary landscapes take us to an indeterminate time and place. One can imagine that we could have seen this drawing thousands of years ago or that it has come to us from the distant future. The uneasy and mystically dreamlike atmosphere of Richard’s works leads us into the surreal world of our collective subconscious or unconscious and gives us space to pause and immerse ourselves in the depths of his hyperrealistic drawings. While drawing, Richard himself ponders questions about where our civilization is heading, where we came from, and where we are going. When we look at the drawings, gaps and surfaces open up or crack within us, just like his velvety charcoal strokes, which our brains and eyes cannot comprehend how they could have been created by human hands and not artificial intelligence. The question is whether the speed of time and the achievements of modern accessories are distracting us from ourselves and our essence inside and outside our existence, and whether we are losing any reflection while staying on the surface of our planet and are deaf to its inner dialogue with us.