Information

Curator
Barbora Kurek Geržová

Opening
March 16, 2023, 6pm

Venue
Representative Halls

Duration
March 17 — May 28, 2023

Guided Tour
April 16, 2023, 4pm

Accompanying events from our new program series Pinacotheme

May 4, 2023, 6pm —
An Evening of Film Love and Making Love with Peter Konečný

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Press release
Invitation

Support

The realisation of the artwork was supported by the Slovak Arts Council in the form of a scholarship.

Jana Farmanová’s monographic exhibition titled Memory does not present a chronological selection of the artist’s portfolio or various stages of her creative development captured in individual image series. The exhibition is based on the reoccurring themes and motives that are present throughout her whole catalogue and which she returns to in different time periods, contexts, moods and frames of mind. The exhibition presents paintings created over a large time span, from the earliest to the most recent ones (2000 – 2023).

Jana Farmanová has exclusively focused on the medium of painting, mostly figural painting, ever since she entered the art scene in the late 1990s. She is a soul painter whose work blends in with everyday routine. She does not differentiate between life and work, one cannot exist without the other. They create one form and shape, they complement, overlap and supplement each other. She paints what she experiences, but experiences more than what she paints. Her themes tend to focus on women and their worlds, their corporeality and changes, the maturing processes that occur when girls become women, but also their maturity, periodicity and motherhood. She reflects on the matters of love, interpersonal relationships, both partner and family ones, including the relationship between a mother and a daughter. A specific part of her catalogue reflects on her relationship with nature, her roots, home and identity, both on a personal and collective level. She is interested in such matters as existence, life changes, the fragility of our being, ephemerality, death and memory. She interprets her own observation and perception of the world that she comments on subjectively using her own life experience and sensual perceptions that have deeply affected her. While staying in contact with herself, she uses self-discovery, self-awareness and personal introspection to learn about and reflect on the outside world. She remains authentic while being powerful and courageous, but also fragile and delicate at the same time. She responds to those social themes she is able to identify with and which help make our society more sensitive. 

Her paintings are intimate, subjective and full of emotions, visualised into image stories, often only depicting fragments and details, something like film frames. The narrative is often only suggested, unspoken, not fully revealed and open to interpretation. She captures a snapshot, a single moment in life which the painting freezes in time for “a while”, just like a photography does, which the painter actually often uses as sketches. She is fascinated by film, literature, architecture, traditional archetypal painting techniques, ancient Japanese art and its quick brush strokes – a gesture which uses its visual simplicity and economy to express the complexity and weight of the whole world. That is also expressed by the artist’s painting language which produces loose, relaxing and intuitive visual images, which are preceded by a thorough and complex research of her own experiences. Her images often depict a human figure, either in its entirety or its parts, sometimes it is the predominant feature of the entire painting, while on other occasions it just supplements the background which tends to move into the foreground. She creates portraits and self-portraits not just in the standard meaning of the word with characteristic human face features, but she makes them using any piece of reality, corporeality or idea. The painter uses the painting medium as a means for materialising her thoughts. 

The Memory exhibition is conceptually divided into several theme sections which encompass different motives (details of hands; feet; lying body; sleeping people) and themes (interpersonal relationships; love – heart; nature; sea – water landscape; jump – movement dynamics). There is a special space dedicated to a new painting installation the artist created on the occasion of this exhibition and which use uses to reflect on the tragic death of two innocent young people – Ján and Martina. This memory is not supposed to serve as a memorial or a shrine, but as a reminder embedded on our inside, in our everyday routine as a symbol of solidarity. The individual theme sections of the exhibition are interconnected, they talk to each other, support each other. However, there can be an internal conflict or contrasting factors between them, which allows us to observe calmness, contemplation, melancholy, but also dynamics, movement and vitality in one place; sleeping – awareness; detail – entirety; life – death; permanence – ephemerality; maturing – aging; order – chaos; consciousness – unconsciousness; personal – public. Ambivalence or polarity are one of the natural characteristic features of the artist’s creative program which leads us to the necessity of balancing these contradictions and creating something harmonious and balanced. The artist’s work thus become a living, ever-changing organism, full of emotions, personality and humanity. 

The Motifs and Themes Presented at the Exhibition:

HANDS
Hands represent a strong gesture, symbol, metaphor, non-verbal means of communication, but also the executioner of trivial everyday tasks. The painter depicts a motif of clasped hands, hands touching her own body, busy hands (embroidering, performing a skin care ritual), hands expressing an emotion (happiness, tiredness, exhaustion) and position (spiritual, an act of connection, proximity) or a symbolic joining of palms we can drink from.

LEGS 
“Back then I lived in two different worlds. One represented motherhood and my daughter and the other one provided an escape to painting, freedom, a woman’s freedom, freedom to create. The Women’s Toys series responds to a period when I was in the process of exploring my own body, intimacy, sexuality, womanhood. What I painted was diametrically different from the life I lived with my child. It was symbolised by legs. Legs can bring you places, you walk, you escape, you can escape a situation holding you back, even though you love the situation (your child). This is my life (with my daughter and my family), but this is also my life (of a painter).”[1]

LYING BODY
“To me, a lonely lying female figure is an expression of the state of BEING. This is my substance, I keep being, no activity, timeless, pure energy, connected to earth. It is something I keep returning to, because she is the zen expression of HERE and NOW, death and life, rebirth, circle of life, nature, which I am.”[2]

SLEEPING PEOPLE
She uses portraits of sleeping people to express physical presence and mental unconsciousness at the same time, the state of being in general. “Sleeping body represents our value, the way we are. This self-evaluation does not require interacting with our surroundings, we create it ourselves in contact with ourselves.”[3]

RELATIONSHIPS
Among the artist’s strong themes belong interpersonal relationships, between partners, family, friends. She uses them to articulate various feelings of proximity, connection, love, distance, coldness, separation, breakups. She expresses different kinds of love, not just by interacting with her surroundings, but also with herself, self-love.

HEARTS
Matters of the Heart is a follow-up to her series of Trains which describe relationships in regard to travelling, good-byes and welcomes. It is not a coincidence that heart is a symbol of love, it is a vital organ. As if it was trying to say that the meaning and essence of life is Love. This is what my latest aquarelles are about.”[4]

NATURE & HUMAN
One of the artist’s key themes is her strong relationship with nature as the archetypal essence of all being. “I love the wilderness of the forest, nature, it is my elemental battery charger”[5] It is important to her to connect and merge with nature, live in harmony with it. She is fascinated by its ambivalence, harmony of its forces, regular cycles, spontaneousness, cruelness and vulnerability. 

WATER LANDSCAPE
”Water is the essence of life. The water of life, we are water, water is rebirth.”[6] Water is a recurring theme in her paintings where it appears in various forms. Sometimes she captures the banks of Danube, other times she depicts children playing by the sea, or in the sea, typical family album memories.

JUMP
Dynamic Movement – Jump, it is a lot more active painting in contrast to her other more meditative pieces which tend to focus on contemplation, dreaming, melancholy. Dynamic Movement represents freedom, independence, lightness, weightlessness, the state of being and existing in the moment. 

JÁN & MARTINA
There is a special space dedicated to a new painting installation the artist created on the occasion of this exhibition and which she uses to reflect on the tragic death of two innocent young people – Ján and Martina. This memory is not supposed to serve as a memorial or a shrine, but as a reminder embedded on our inside, in our everyday routine as a symbol of solidarity. The artist was so moved by this event that she has paid them individual attention, just like her own family, which she also somewhat considered them to be a part of. 

— Barbora Kurek Geržová

Quotations used in the exhibition space

[1] a personal interview between Jana Farmanová and the curator Barbora Kurek Geržová.
[2] Light – darkness,  sleeping – awareness, activity – melancholy, presence – absence. Ivana Moncoľová’s interview with Jana Farmanová. In.: Profil 3´10, p. 51.
[3] a personal interview between Jana Farmanová and the curator Barbora Kurek Geržová.
[4] Jana Farmanová: I’m Fascinated by Visual Narratives, in an interview with Gabriela Kisová. In.: Art Banking Bulletin 3/2011.
[5] In an interview with Jana Močková: How do girls mature? These images will paint the best picture. https://dennikn.sk/48316/v-znameni-dievcenstva/;
[6] On a Cliff – an exhibition at the Dražovce Church https://kamdomesta.sk/jana-farmanova-na-utese.

Jana Farmanová (*1970, Nitra). From 1989 to 1996, she studied at a studio of painting (under prof. J. Berger) at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava. She has taken multiple residencies, 6×9 (2010) and Mini Residency (2015), both at Banská St a nica Contemporary in Banská Stiavnica. In 2003, she was an associate lecturer at prof. Hodonský’s studio at the Department of Painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Academy of Arts in Banská Bystrica and since 2016, she has been an associate lecturer of painting courses at this department. She exhibits both in Slovakia and abroad. Her first solo exhibition at Nitra Gallery titled Arrival was held in 1995 and then followed by two other ones, JF (2003), Jana Farmanová (2005). She has also participated at various group and theme exhibition projects – Windless (2005), Which Way Out (2012), Interview (2010), Film. Directed by Artists 2 (2013), Best Wishes! (2022). The artist’s work can be found across various private and public collections – Nitra Gallery, Bratislava City Gallery, City Gallery Rimavská Sobota, the Olomouc Museum of Modern Art, the Aleš South Bohemian Gallery in České Budejovice, Wannieck Gallery Brno, Sammlung Würth in Germany. Her works have been used in various prose and poetry books (Paolo Cognetti: Sofia Always Wears Black, 2018; Robinson Jeffers: Roan Stallion, 2015; Denisa Fulmeková: Maternity Leave, 2012; Denisa Fulmeková: Paper Shoes, 2009; Carol Ann Duffyová: Unholy Woman, 2006). In 2006, she created a large format ceiling painting for the Mojmírovce Mansion. She lives and works in Nitra.

In cooperation with 3D Real — Virtuálne prehliadky.

Event poster

Picture of event

Exhibition opening
Photo: Martin Sipták

Exhibition views
Photo: Martin Daniš

Curatorial guided tour
Photo: Martin Sipták