Each and every one of us sees the world differently. Not everybody has the ambition and skills to present their ideas to others. From time immemorial, artists were the ones to invite us all to sit around a proverbial table and listen to their stories, learning something new about ourselves in the proces. Through their works, they awaken various senses and emotions, calling on us to act and think, asking us to question and look for answers.
One such artist possessing a gift of storytelling is the sculptor Alena Matějka. After graduating from The Glass Art School in Kamenický Šenov, she studied in the Glass Studio of professor Vladimír Kopecký at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, with a two-months internship at the Glasgow School of Art in Scotland. Nowadays, Matějka lives partly in the Vysočina region, as well as alternating between Sweden and Italy. She often collaborates with her husband, the stone sculptor Lars Windenfalk.
Though not working with glass exclusively, it has an irreplaceable position in Matějka’s body of work. What other material would be able to connect the transient with the eternal, freeze time and create a seemingly static cabinet of curiosities, that would tumultuously intertwine reality with fiction, empathy with irony. Alena Matějka’s cast glass sculptures, often in the combination with other elements (such as stuffed animals), unsettle the viewer, providing no comfort and forcing them to interact.
Alena Matějka does not tell her stories in a linear way, rather, she works with paradoxes, narrative twists and unexpected contexts. She is able to connect what theoreticians called high and low art. Through her masterful work with exaggeration and provocation, her storytelling is always engaging and inspiring.
Alena Matějka se materiálově sice neomezuje pouze na sklo, je však v její tvorbě nenahraditelné. Jaký jiný materiál by také v sobě dokázal spojit pomíjivost okamžiku s věčností, doslova ztuhnout v čase a vytvářet zdánlivě statický kabinet kuriozit, v němž se však dynamicky prolíná realita s fikcí, empatie s ironií? Tavené skleněné plastiky Aleny Matějky, často v kombinaci s jinými prvky (včetně vycpanin), uvádějí diváka do rozpaků, nedávají mu komfortní pocit jistoty a nutí jej k reakci.
Své příběhy nevypráví lineárně, právě naopak – libuje si v paradoxech, dějových zvratech a překvapivých kontextech. Dokáže organicky propojovat to, co teoretici někdy nazývají vysokým a nízkým uměním. Bravurně pracuje s nadsázkou i provokací, proto je její vyprávění tak poutavé a inspirující.
Petr Nový
hlavní kurátor Muzea skla a bižuterie v Jablonci nad Nisou
kurátor Galerie Kuzebauch
