Karolína Šulcová
(CZ)
Karolína Šulcová (1997) lives and works in Prague, she is a recent graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague.
The fundamental morphology in Karolína Šulcová‘s work is time, which becomes a tangible tool for her, along with paint and canvas. The artist applies time lightly, delicately, gradually. The rhythms of chaos slow
down and quiet down. Through her painting, she unfolds the folds of the world, abstracting from archipelago, cosmic chaos, multiplicity, her own testimony. Whether in the previous positions of her work
she turns to walking through landscapes, or, as now, devotes herself to the realm of the articulated architecture, the home, these are different points of contact formulated by one subject, purely and authentically hers, using the same handwriting, the same gaze. Characteristic of Karolína Šulcová‘s work is the gentle melancholy to which the artist does not succumb, but explores it, observes it, lets it flow on the canvas. The individual folds touched by the work are many, and in each moment of the point of contact, the layers of the folds unfold before the viewer‘s eyes; the rake becomes a tree, a woman absorbed in the movement of the grass, the feathers mirrored in the clouds. Transgenerational memory meets the present moment. The inner and outer worlds are but different folds of the same. This is not created at a breakneck pace - the images open slowly, melodiously. Time in The artist‘s works flow graciously, offering the perceiver their own slowing down.
The sensory experience of the body is another element that the author consciously treats. The artist does not leave the viewer to wander alone - the way to read the works is mediated in many examples through a frame that directs attention.This framing is deliberately often done outside the realm of the painting. The perceiver‘s gaze is guided through the objets trouvés, boxes, crates, shelves, objects that, stripped of their original essence defined by function, now take on a new meaning. Karolína thus points to the complexity of the cosmos in space as such, as the work physically penetrates places, asserting itself through the casting of shadows, the splitting of light. Sight, the body of the viewer are directed. Karolína Šulcová‘s artworks do not show, but teach to see, and thus transcend the limits of reality.
The third, and absolutely essential, element that characterizes the artist‘s works is the formulation. The task of the perceiver is in no way to formulate a tangible mystery to unveil it, since to unveil it would
mean its inevitable extinction. Affect plays a crucial part here role. In communicating with the artworks of Karolína Šulcová, it invites phrónêsis, embodied in alertness. It is in such a state that the viewer is able to
open the work from his side, to create his own subjective point of contact and give rise to another fold. The work, the observer and the cosmos are inevitably transformed. It is necessary to succumb to this enigmatic
nature of the artist‘s works - not to open the door wide, not to end a sentence with a period, just to perceive, observe, decompose and
(Text © Nataša Hand)
https://www.instagram.com/karolina_sulc/
(Photo © the artist)
