THE PATH IS THORNY — Anezzka Hosková and Anna Hulaccová at Municipal Museum and Gallery, Horice

Submission
MAY 09, 2023

The Path is Thorny

Anežka Hošková, Anna Hulačová at Hořice Municipal Museum
December 15, 2022 — April 15, 2023

The Path is Thorny exhibition, opened by the Hořice Municipal Museum on December 15th, presents a collaboration by two important contemporary artists – painter Anežka Hošková and sculptor Anna Hulačová. An interest in the legendary and magical, typical for the work of Hošková, meets the eco-rural science fiction in Hulačová’s sculptures.

Anna Hulačová (1982) graduated from Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, in the departments of Jaroslav Róna and Jiří Příhoda. In 2016, she attracted a lot of attention with her exhibition as part of the finals of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award, where she also won the audience award. She creates her sculptures mostly from concrete, but sometimes also from more traditional materials such as ceramics or wood. In her work, Hulačová reacts to the forms of European as well as non-European art history, socialist modernism, surrealism or folklore. Non-human natural forms, however, are also essential for her; bees and the results of their work have a particularly prominent position.

Painter, drawing artist and musician Anežka Hošková (1984) graduated from FaVU in Brno under Václav Stratil. She is a prominent Czech representative of the international trends of new romanticism and fantasy painting. Recently, she has been working most often with watercolour technique, the specific characteristics of which she uses to create a mysterious atmosphere, supported by the motifs of churches or castle towers, strange animals and fragments of human bodies. However, Hošková’s work is not limited to painting and drawing; she is also active in music and the production of cultural events, often creates installations, and she has recently started creating stained glass, which is also presented in Hořice.

Most of the works were created directly for the exhibition space and are the result of a collaboration between the two artists. They share an interest in the theme of the relationship with nature, which is materialized in their work with organic morphology, sometimes prickly, other times gently absorbing.
Anežka Hošková works with lyrically expressed sadness about the irreversibility of changes caused by human activity. The failure of perhaps even a romantic relationship acquires a symbolic touch for her, the spirituality of which is underlined by the choice of stained glass technique. The works resemble icons or legends about the lives of saints. The lines are deliberately graceful to the eyes, and the colours are creamy and flowing; they meet motifs of eyes, tears and vulvic butterflies. There is an oscillation between erotic sweetness and a smooth steely coldness. Stained glass allows Anežka to preserve the specific liquid picturesqueness of her watercolour tears that are both sad and lovely at the same time. The gallery space was specifically altered for installation of the stained glass windows. They remind us of the motifs of the eye, seeming like a view into another world.

The reliefs and sculptures of Anna Hulačová are united by the theme of nature’s fertility for humans and at the same time its indomitability. Fertile ears of corn and honeycombs are mixed here with the thorns of invasive plants, and sometimes even cells or viral balls, which appear threatening. Nature is no longer pure and transparent, but even in the mutations caused by human influence, it retains its power, growing over the ruins of futile human efforts to control and conquer it. In her mixture of art nouveau ornament, science fiction and, in some details, even celebratory forms of socialist realism, Hulačová connects the past with the future in the motif of mutating regeneration.

Together, the authors created a series of heads combining Hulačová’s expression of late modernism with the motifs of thorns and tears of Hošková, who depicted their faces in stained glass. In the same way, Anežka inserted her own watercolour paintings into Anna’s modern reliefs reminiscent of sci-fi. There, the organically graceful lines of both authors meet. The ornamentation of Hulačová’s thorn sculpture is complemented by Hošková’s suspended stained glass butterfly. The butterfly fluttering in the thorny bush has thus become a symbol of the entire exhibition and the mutual connection of the styles of the two artists. Thorns and spikes, tears and wings may yet give us some hope.

The Štorchova Hall of the Municipal Museum in Hořice has been filled with the latest Czech art. We are very pleased by our cooperation with Michal Novotný, director of the Collection of Modern and Contemporary Art of the National Gallery, Prague, who took on the role of curator of the exhibition. We are also very happy that Anežka Hošková and Anna Hulačová accepted the invitation to show their work in Hořice. Both artists are not only prominent on the Czech art scene, but they also attract attention abroad. At the same time, we are convinced that their work will be interesting and stimulating for people who are not familiar with contemporary art. Especially in Hořice, which has long been famous for its care for artistic creation.