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<\/a>Installation view of Monochromatic Landscape<\/em> at Walnut Contemporary, 2017<\/p>\nCurator Ib\u00e9rina Raquel Vilhena involved three artists: Julia Harris, Gonzalo B\u00e9nard and Lum\u00edr Hlad\u00edk. Vilhena wrote, \u201cThree artists, three views: different directions and myriads of experiences. Artists, tossed and shaken by a turbulent world, who are living out the arbitrary divisive gap of inorganic versus organic, natural versus man made. However, the aim of our exhibit was to go deep, to reach way below the surface. We have morphed the gallery itself into a landscape. Here, we ignited a benign alchemy, offering you a journey through spaces and places, uncovering beauty in oddity and discovering wisdom in the mundane. Opening a world of curiosity, charming ambiguity and unexpected unity: resonating thousands of strings, each different in tune, but forming one gargantuan monochromatic chord.\u201d<\/p>\n
The three artists\u2019 works are really different but they also compliment each other in their unique dramatic appearance and poetic underlining. Two of the walls are covered with Harris\u2019 winter landscapes. Large compositions depicting ice and snow dunes with water running between them or their white shields interrupted by dark grey mud, some even with the ice turning into that much-hated black ice. These landscapes are out there somewhere in undisturbed nature absent any human present, just winter, ice, cold water that looks dark grey in the absence of sunshine and a far off forest with leafless trees. They create a very cold feeling but still somewhat peaceful.<\/p>\n Juxtaposed against the amorphous, half abstract shapes of Harris\u2019 work is B\u00e9nard stone-stolid forms. He is a multitalented artist with outstanding and challenging photographs. I first recognized him from his Mutantspace series, the man\/woman\/animal combinations, their dialogues between conscious and subconscious are hard to forget. The Stone Landscapes<\/em> he exhibits here are equally interesting, especially if you know his other works. In one of them a large, granite stone that seems to be polished into an egg shape that has the illusion of softness, maybe smoothed by human hands or by water. The latest seems more like a found object instead of human made and more symbolic. It stands on a stone needle, hardly touching it, in an alien landscape, ancient or moonlike. Another Stone Landscape<\/em> depicts a levitating object, that strongly reminds me of the human brain with its veins above a stone crater. It seems to be floating in the air however heavy it might be. Is it emerging from the ground or falling into it? What is it? Is there a living thing underneath the rough surface? Looking at these images I believe that these stones are pulsing with life, as some of the ancient nations believe, that they are alive, feel and communicate with us \u2013 as they definitely do in B\u00e9nard\u2019s view.<\/p>\n The mystery continues in Lum\u00edr Hlad\u00edk sculptural piece, Needles<\/em>. The tree-mummy, as I call it, captures time through life and death, prolonged afterlife in a \u201cmummified state\u201d and memories of the original event, Christmas, as well as the long period of becoming needleless. The artist picked up a Christmas tree from the street after someone discarded it after the holidays. It was still a Christmas tree, heavy with the memories of a family holiday. Then he took it into his studio and the long wait for it to become completely dead started. It took more than 900 days until all the needles fell off. Who would think it take that long for a cut tree to die? Then Hlad\u00edk wrapped it lovingly in a burial gauze, creating a tree-mummy. His other trees are painted silver, making them happier-looking, so viewers can lose themselves in the beauty of their natural carvings and knots.<\/p>\n The largest wall of the gallery is covered with Arboreal Gothic<\/em> by Hlad\u00edk, a rather organic composition created from many pieces of beautiful drawings. Magic is hidden in the sensitive curving lines, the magic of trees, animals and even humans who might be hidden or buried in them. Some old Celtic legends tell stories of wild men living in trees, being put into a young tree that slowly surrounded them still alive. Some of the curving lines remind us of hairy heads of all kind of creatures who look at us through the burned wholes of paper. A white night heavy with mystical air and a distant smoke of bonfire.<\/p>\n The show as a whole vision is a piece of art, a garden of magic and solitude. A sensitive balance seems to be the guiding idea of this exhibition where art works are placed in harmony, like music notes.<\/p>\n<\/a>Installation view of Monochromatic Landscape<\/em> at Walnut Contemporary, 2017<\/p>\n<\/a>Julia Harris, The pool in winter, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches<\/p>\n<\/a>Gonzalo B\u00e9nard, Stoned Landscapes, 2017, Photography on 240grs cotton smooth matte archival paper,\u00a019″7 x 19″7<\/p>\n<\/a>Installation view with Gonzalo B\u00e9nard, Stoned Landscapes, 2017, Photography on 240grs cotton smooth matte archival paper, 19″7 x 19″7 (on the wall) and\u00a0Lum\u00edr Hlad\u00edk’s sculpture (in front)<\/p>\n<\/a>Installation view with works by Julia Harris (on the wall) and Lum\u00edr Hlad\u00edk, Needles (in front)<\/p>\n<\/a>Lum\u00edr Hlad\u00edk, Arboreal Gothic, 2010 – 2016<\/p>\n