Ira Svobodová
What happens at the interface of light and shadow, where colours and shapes merge with the air in a haze of mist? Between any two phases there is always a certain liminal situation, a mysterious space of unclear contours in which a transformational process takes place leading from one state to another. We never know much about the transitional phases themselves and are unable so much as to attempt a description without defining them in relation to the preceding and succeeding states. However, in the words of Merleau-Ponty, we can view them as “gaps through which poetry penetrates“.
It is the transitional horizon of phenomena that has become the leitmotif of Ira Svobodová’s exhibitions, in whose work the analytical approach to the medium of painting has always been naturally intertwined with reflections on human life and psychological states. It is for this reason that she has long turned to geometric morphology in her paintings in conjunction with subtle colour schemes and the surfaces of the ephemeral material of paper. The delicacy of pure, illuminated forms has now been deepened by work with transparent papers and the phenomenon of coloured shadows. In her new painting cycles, Svobodová offers a glimpse into the hidden dimensions of painting, not only through the translucent surfaces of paper, but also by directly cutting through the paper surfaces, into which she then inserts additional strips of coloured paper. On the one hand, she reveals what has hitherto been hidden from the viewer: on the other, she places her paintings in a uniformly coloured environment thus suppressing their dominant aspects. In this way, Svobodová obscures the notion of what is fundamental, namely, whether it is that which is accessible to us at first sight, or that towards which we have to work our way patiently and attentively.
