Dana Sahánková – You Will Never Find Serenity in Your Shell

Dana Sahánková continuously works with the medium of large-format drawing. The title of her exhibition "You will never find a place in your skin" is a modification of a quote from one of the replicas of Mephisto. Modification consists in transferring the action from the third person (he) to the action of the second person (you). In the background of the project, a Faustian theme can be felt, which the author touches on during the longer-term visual thematization of time and memory. To express them, he has long used an arsenal of selected animals (wolves, dogs, deer, cats) in relation to the space, which is constantly changing. This allegorized relationship, which is a mutual dynamic "growth" of the figures and their frameworks, is sometimes supplemented by mythical figures with some unspecified mission (e.g. the returning dreamlike figure of the little angel). The predators represented by the chosen animals are removed from their dominant roles and become victims of the passage of time. Their bodies, full of aggressive gestures, disintegrate into fragments and are assembled into new wholes evoking a dreamlike atmosphere, states of ecstasy, enlightenment or hallucinations. Unreal is the "undulating space" itself, the structure of which is constantly disintegrating and collapsing, or transforming as a result of an unknown mechanism (Untitled VII-I and Untitled VII-II, 2014-15). The viewer can often feel like an uninvited guest here. We delve into deep psychoanalytic situations in their polarizing rawness, or into constellations that, in a metaphorical shorthand, exceed the human scale not only on the physical level, but above all on the level of reflective consciousness. By escalating uncertainty, the author reveals the reverse side of the systematized and rationalized world in which we live.

Dana Sahánková (b. 1984 in Prague) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 2005-2011 (drawing studio of Prof. Jitka Svobodová). In 2008 she studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'art in Dijon and in 2009 at the New Media II studio of Veronika Bromová (AVU, Prague). While still a student in 2010, her work was presented as part of the Start Up cycle at the Prague GHMP; in 2011, it was included in the balance project Czech painting of the generation of the zero years of the 21st century in the Wannieck Gallery in Brno. In 2012, she was a finalist at the Critics' Choice Awards, where she received the Audience Award. She recently exhibited independently in the Kutnohorsk GASK (Vertikála šerosvitu project, 2016) and participated in the collective projects POSTCONCEPTUAL ANTICONCEPTION (OGV, Jihlava, 2017; Galerie U Bílého jednorožce, Galerie Klatovy – Klenová, 2018), Tremors (Galerie Halle 14. Leipziger Baumwollspinnerei, Leipzig) , 2017) and Tangenty (House of Art of the City of Brno, 2019). This year, she will sit on the jury of the EXIT 2019 award. She has already exhibited at Trafo Gallery once, in 2018 she participated in the OSM project