Galerie arto.to, Uhelný mlýn
Areál Šroubáren 860, 252 66 Libčice nad Vltavou
In 1965, the novel Those Who Prefer Nettles, a classic of Japanese literature by Junichiro Tanizaki, who is probably better known in the Czech art scene for his study Praise of Shadows, was published in a translation by Vlasta Hilská. Traditions of Japanese Aesthetics. The novel depicting the breakdown of a marriage is a metaphor of the clash between traditional Japanese culture and Euro-American influences. Long passages describe Japanese puppet theatre, songs and clothing, but also very open reflections and dialogues between characters concerning unfulfilled marital relationships and erotic fantasies and desires. It is the puppet theatre that is here a metaphor for the original Japan, whose traditions were strongly reflected in family life. The notion of the ideal wife as a puppet, to which the protagonist also gradually gravitates, plays a key role in the novel. Although almost 40 years had passed since the novel was written at the time of the Czech translation, the (undoubtedly more demanding) readers of the time must have been attracted by the looser sexuality, the exotic Japanese culture and the heroine's strong emancipatory tendencies. Maria Filippovová's eponymous series of prints, which responded to the novel a year later, also touches on these main thematic coordinates. However, this is not a "mere" illustration of the book, but rather a correlation of the literary prefigure with her own work and life.
Prints from the series Those Who Prefer Nettles are the core of the exhibition at the arto.to gallery. They are complemented by Maria Filippovová's current drawings Dreams and Reality (2001-2024), which demonstrate the artist's unceasing interest in the medium of lavished ink drawing and the medium of paper across the decades. Maria Filippov is further accompanied by three generations apart artists, Lada Semecká (1973), Eva Sakuma (1975) and Moemi Yamamoto (1985), who, like her, combine European influences with Japanese ones and vice versa. Each does so from her own position and perspective shaped by her individual life experience. Eva Sakuma lives alternately in the Czech Republic and Japan, which has become her second home and family environment. The intermingling of worlds is one of the central themes of her painting. Lada Semecká moved to Japan for several years when she taught glass at an art school in Toyama. Elements of Japanese aesthetics became an integral part of Lada's muted work. Moemi Yamamoto is originally from Japan. She lives and works in the Czech Republic, where she also recently completed her studies in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. Her paintings combine Japanese motifs with references to Renaissance European painting as well as to the current reflection of surrealism in art.
The personal experience of the artists represented problematizes the influential phenomenon of japonerie. The aesthetic dimension of japonerie has been essential and fundamental to different periods and epochs of art, but at the same time it has often been mainly formal. For the selected artists it is part of a life trajectory, a dimension of life and artistic experience defined by relationality on the one hand and immersion, silence and contemplation on the other.
Marie Filippovová / Eva Sakuma / Lada Semecká / Moemi Yamamoto
Curator: Vendula Fremlová
