Lukáš Šmejkal
InstagramIn his painting, Lukáš Šmejkal connects landscape with introspective layers of human experience. He draws on photographs he takes during expeditions to nature and further transforms them through painting. His paintings do not evoke specific places, but mental states – inner landscapes in which body, memory and imagination intersect.
He is inspired by Baroque emotionality and hermetic traditions, which resonate in his work as imagined structures and symbols. The result is works that act as visual meditations on the changing nature of the landscape.
Artist's exhibitions
Pulse of Samsara
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.