Tereza Severová | Tree in the Middle of a Landscape
05/06/21–29/08/21

The Gallery of Modern Art in Hradec Králové is displaying the latest work of Tereza Severová (*1979) at the Bílá kostka (White Cube) exhibition room. It is a three-channel video projection called Tree in the Middle of a Landscape (Strom uprostřed krajiny, 2021), in which the artist concludes her ongoing exploration of the theme of trees as significant elements of the Czech landscape, imbued not only with environmental but also symbolic and political meaning. Severová’s work focuses primarily on photography, moving images, and their digital manipulation. Through these mediums, she tests the meaning of traditional social values like freedom and democracy, the evolution of the perception of freedom and democracy, their loss of content, and how their meaning changes over time. Recently, the artist’s attention has been turned with increasing frequency towards the relationship between the individual and the landscape, especially the post-industrial landscape, which we have, to a certain extent, been taught to see as a mediated image, which we cannot alter. Thus, the landscape, utilized as a projection screen of (un)realized visions, longings, collective and personal rituals and creative gestures, becomes a meeting point for an unexpected layering of dialogue between the author and generationally-distant but, in certain aspects of their work, surprisingly related artists – Ivan Kafka (*1952) and Dalibor Chatrný (1925–2012).

For this exhibition-in-dialogue, the gallery borrowed a collection of photographs by Ivan Kafka called From a Tale of Fluttering I., II (Z povídky o vlání I., II., 1976) and For Personal Maxi-Use, 1979 (Pro soukromou maxipotřebu) from the collection of the Moravian Gallery in Brno, which documents the author’s first nature photographs, created in the second half of the 70s, and six manipulated photographs by Dalibor Chatrný (Manipulated Photographs I.–VI. / Manipulované fotografie I.–VI.) from the years 1978–1985 from the collection of the Gallery Klatovy / Klenová.