Denisa Nová exhibition
Collaboration:
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Photograph:
Archive of GASK
2015, Kutná Hora
The architect's task was to express the precise vision of the artist. The means of expression were limited in such a way that it was necessary to work with the existing resources of the gallery and the available light sources. In this situation, I remembered the years spent at the Laterna Magika and sought to combine inventiveness, technique, and imagination into an empathetic whole.
The atmosphere of the exhibition is best described by the curator Veronika Marešová's text:
The intimate gallery space Whitebox has already experienced many transformations and hosted a number of unusual and surprising presentations of contemporary design on the border of fine art. However, it has never donned a cloak as mysterious and captivating as in the case of the collection A/W 15–16 / "You Are What You Desire" by fashion designer Denisa Nová and her collaborating digital sculptor Helena Lukášová. Upon entering the room, we are surrounded by white darkness, subtly woven with thin beams of light. Our eyes gradually adjust to the dim lighting, which slowly reveals the dark beauty of leather pairs of ankle boots and women's shoes. The shoes seem to be carelessly walking or unexpectedly left in the glass blocks, lying directly on the wooden floor. The mystical atmosphere under the Baroque vault is intensified by a seemingly cruciform installation of objects reminiscent of contemporary reliquaries. From the entrance to the space, a line of shoe pairs runs, with unmistakably golden heels decorated with reliefs in the shape of torsos of hands and feet (by the sculptor) or with wedges shaped by a cloned figure (the sculptor’s man) in the position of Atlas. Perpendicular to them, Denisa Nová's sensitively restored and recycled cut-up perzians (from 1920–1970, found on January 31, 2015, at the Jeu de Balle flea market in Brussels) with brooches complete the entire sculptural-jewelry series titled "You Are What You Desire." Nearly moonlight exposure of the exhibition accentuates the fluffiness of fur and the reflections of jewelry with motifs of manipulated parts of human bodies, drawing mysterious shadow silhouettes on the walls...
Although both artists create independently, not together in one studio, their individual artistic contributions are marked by rare complementarity, and they come together in a very compact and pure whole.