Ma\u00efa Muller is delighted to present VEYLON, Monika Michalko's first solo exhibition in France.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Born 1982 in Sokolov, Czech Republic. Lives and works in Colombo, Sri Lanka and Berlin, Germany\nMonika Michalko studied from 2003 to 2009 in the class of Norbert Schwontkowski at the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg.\nHer dreamlike landscapes resonate with echoes of classical modernism, from Malevich to Klee, but also references to Joan Mir\u00f3\nand brothers Gert and Uwe Tobias. The artist\u2019s colourful paintings on wooden panels are furthermore influenced by her travels\nto Egypt, India and Turkey, particularly with regard to ornamentation and architectural forms. Michalko\u2019s work was shown at\nKunsthaus Hamburg in 2013, Kunsthaus Jesteburg in 2016 and at Art Cologne in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A thousand stars<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jens Asthoff<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Images conquer the room, sprawl over the floor and occupy individual segments of wall, interspersed with other, classical\npaintings on canvas. Exhibitions by Monika Michalko are often extensive ensembles, painting installations playfully extending\ninto the space. The presentation of her paintings, \u2013 mostly oil but sometimes also oil pastels on canvas \u2013 is thus complemented\nand expanded, integrated into spatial contexts, their narrative continued and intensified. This is achieved, among others, by\nmeans of drapings or hangings of coloured textiles and mural paintings, and even cinematic and sculptural elements have on\noccasion been used in her exhibitions. Sometimes she adds floor pieces sewn from colourful fabrics (in this exhibition, she uses\nfor the first time coloured PVC film), which are reminiscent of abstract image carpets and whose ornamentation speaks the\nsame language as her painting while retaining their very own objectual character. At Galerie Ma\u00efa Muller she has also primed a\nwall with wallpaper \u2013 a three-by-four-meter print of a pencil drawing \u2013 on which she has placed individual paintings. The\ndrawing becomes a second-order pictorial medium that intervenes in the rhythm and motifs of the painting: a quasi-scenic\ninterplay of forms and objects typical of Michalko\u2019s work, which, always with a dash of spontaneity, produces surprising formal\nassociations. But the artist does not merely use these techniques to examine formal questions of presentation. In line with her\nvery own artistic programme, she is interested in entwinement, condensation and reflection \u2013 in other words, in an all-round\nconversation between images and pictorial elements. The exhibition thus becomes a alkable Gesamtkunstwerk, where visitors\ncontinually discover new details \u2013 just as in the paintings themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In her paintings, Michalko proceeds from a simple, abstract formal vocabulary: triangles, rectangles, lines, circles, semicircles,\noval and drop shapes, occasionally accompanied by words or concise sentences in painted typography. Meandering through\nthe image as ornamented rhythms, plant-like motifs or exuberant layers, all these elements combine into an assertive organic\nornamental order \u2013 which is then joyfully disrupted, either through pure abstraction, that is, in the form of dynamic asymmetries\nthat lend these images their imponderable, contradictory and charming coherence, or \u2013 and this is only seemingly paradoxical \u2013\nby venturing into the realm of the figuration. But more on this later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first strategy - the purely non-figurative use of the artist's pictorial vocabulary - is at work, for example, in the large-format I Thought I Am Your Friend (2017), an abstract painting that shows the meeting of pictorial elements reminiscent of clouds with an area composed of rectangular, circular and triangular fields. The interior of the two zones is structured in an irregular, organic way, but the disparity of their reciprocal relationships gives rise to a palpable tension. The cloudy zones, executed in intense blue, red and black, mixed with magenta and sulphur green in the upper part of the picture, seem both imposing and threatening, while tones from the same color family, albeit paler, are found in the gridded fields at the bottom of the picture. In the transition zone, a delicate latticework of colored lines floats; curved or perpendicular, they are loosely entangled. They thus form a lyrical element whose behavior differs from that of the image's other protagonists in that they recall melodic lines, the abstract expression of a multi-voiced conversation or a sketch of incipient melancholy. Like all Monika Michalko's works, however, this painting can also be considered solely in terms of its formal language, i.e. as an orphic abstract composition from which emerges an aesthetic tension resulting from surprising compositional techniques and ruptures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the Way to Far East (2017) works in a similar, though somewhat more disruptive manner: in a sequence typical of\nMichalko\u2019s work, abstract elements are reinterpreted into decorum by way of a closed sequence of small, glaring to dirty colour\nfields enclosing the image as an irregular frame. In the zone thus outlined, a multitude of flat pictorial elements unfold, which\nare predominantly abstract but can also be read figuratively, and often even both: three corked bottles at the bottom right, for\ninstance, are recognisable as abstract objects; operating in a semantic space, on the other hand, are the three, four shapes\ncomposed of bottles, bowls, spheres and other forms which, delicately balancing upon each another, become an abstract figure\nwhen read vertically \u2013 as a mixture of things and forms, they amalgamate both modes of representation: the circle is a head, the\nbottle shape or triangle becomes a supporting shoulder. Michalko has embedded these quasi-figures in an environment of\nsmall, roughly executed pale shapes and colour fields. Often streaking out on their edges and fading into white, the background\nformations dissolve into a latently chaotic vibration that taints the abstract arrangement of pictorial elements with\nimponderability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Radiant Child (2017) too is such a characteristic intermediate zone between abstract and figurative representation, to\nwhich typographic elements have here been added: slightly to the right of the centre we see elongated forms, a black circle and\na hat-shaped or tuft-like pointy shape loosely assembled into a puppet-like figure reminiscent of the homunculus which,\nincidentally, reappears in Him Again (2018). As though placed in a stage-like arrangement of dotted, floral or even tectonic\ncolour shapes, it seems to beckon the beholder. On a bulbous oval shape to its left, the title of the painting becomes part of the\ncomposition, proclaiming that here stands the \u2018radiant child\u2019 in the midst of a crowded, yet strangely secluded, indeed isolated\nworld. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paintings such as The Believers, Tempel, Till or Kotte House (all 2018) lean more strongly, more obviously towards figuration.\nThey are examples of Michalko\u2019s ability to develop diverse, yet anything but abstract genres such as still life, figure, interior,\nlandscape and portrait entirely out of her characteristically flat ornamental imagery. In the foreground of The Believers, for\ninstance, we see a small group of figures in opulent traditional costumes: dresses, coats and hats composed of abstract shapes \u2013\nquite similar to On the Way to Far East , yet more clearly anthropomorphic in design. In the background, playfully overlapping\ntriangular and rectangular fields assemble into the image of a building, while green plant shapes suggest amorphous, tropical\ngrowth; and by placing a pale yellow circle, slightly hidden in the abstract branches on the top right, Michalko manages to\ntransform the image, created from strong but predominantly dark colours, into a nocturnal moonlight scenario. The\narchitecture in Tempel is formed of similar plane layers of shapes, while Kotte House constructs a complete interior from both\npotentially figurative and abstract shapes \u2013 which, in turn, with its carpet, object and material drapings, resembles Michalko\u2019s\narrangements of objects in the exhibition space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The seemingly naive, folkloristic trait in Michalko\u2019s formal vocabulary, as well as her characteristically bright colours, often set on\na dark background, are partly owed to biographical-regional influences: Michalko was born in Czechoslovakia (in today\u2019s Czech\nRepublic) and has been appropriating aspects of local folk art early on in her work. Her more recent influences originate from a\ncompletely different part of the world: after travelling to India in 2013, Michalko decided to settle for a while in Sri Lanka. In the\ncountry\u2019s everyday culture, facades, walls, doors or even cars are brightly coloured, as are people\u2019s clothes, their saris and\nsarongs: \u2018In some places, it really felt as though I was running through my own paintings and that wherever you look, all is art\u2019,\nexplained the artist in a conversation. \u2018Particularly the colours, but also temples and urban architecture, have left a long-lasting\nimpression on my thoughts and feelings.\u2019 This is directly corroborated by individual motifs and titles: the previously mentioned\nKotte House, for instance, refers to Pita Kotte, a neighbourhood in Colombo where the artist lives with her family. Or by It\u2019s\nGetting Dark in Nugegoda (2018), a small, shining colour-field composition on a backdrop of impenetrable darkness\nrepresenting a row of houses in the neighbourhood of the same name. In the lower part of the image, a band of brightly\ncoloured circles crosses the scene, while upward lines, semicircular structures and drop shapes let architectural details dissolve\ninto rough abstraction; on the top edge of the image, as though hidden among brown garlands of clouds, the moon hangs over\nthe city, a lightless circle, half gray, half black. Borella (2018) too refers to a district in Colombo by title. This abstract\ncomposition of complex layers of colour forms is composed like a painting in the painting. Although it steers clear of figuration,\nthe colours of the city, the doors, walls and facades, here seem to culminate in a single condensed perception. The overlapping\nof forms, which is reminiscent of Concrete artists such as Ib Geertsen or Poul Gernes, both subtly and vaguely plays with\nsuggestions of letters, whose meaning, of course, cannot be deciphered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michalko often uses typography as an autonomous formal element. This is epitomised by the typographic poster bearing the\ninscription \u2018Veylon\u2019 and the key exhibition dates, which the artist has painted specifically for this occasion. And in Deine Augen\n(2017) typography is even the main topic. Set on an indeterminately dark, cloud-ridden background, shapes and letters float\nweightlessly in the pictorial space; a cluster of concentric lines seems to hold some of back them like balloons, yet without\ncreating any clear sense of order. The letters are highly individualised according to rhythm, form and colour, and removed from\nany obvious typographic alignment, which consciously works against the idea of readability. It is with some delay, while reading,\nthat viewers realise that the painting says more than its title. It reads \u2018Deine Augen\u2019, and from the remaining letters one slowly\nputs together the words \u2018a thousand stars\u2019. An artistic declaration of love \u2013 addressed to a specific person? Or, in the bigger\nscheme of things, to the Other, the You in whom we recognise ourselves? In the end, a painterly homage to seeing as such?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jens Asthoff lives and works as a freelance writer, critic, editor and translator in Hamburg, Germany. He studied philosophy\nand German languages\/literature in Freiburg and Hamburg. He is a member of aica (International Association of Art Critics)\nand writes a. o. for magazines such as Artforum, Camera Austria, Kunstforum, and contributions to catalogues. He is the editor\nof Be magazine, published by K\u00fcnstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin.<\/p>","protected":false},"featured_media":21283,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-21282","exposition","type-exposition","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-passees"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maiamuller.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exposition\/21282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maiamuller.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/exposition"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maiamuller.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/exposition"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maiamuller.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.maiamuller.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.maiamuller.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}