DOMINIK HLINKA

Fission

Gallery project, painings

28.1. – 28.2.2023

Galéria PARTER BSC, Banská Štiavnica, Slovensko

Artist: Dominik Hlinka

Photo and edit: Marek Jančúch

The exhibition situation of FISSION works with the establishment of different painting attitudes/concepts, where Dominik Hlinka creates a group exhibition of one artist, himself. The conceptual starting point is the artist's current feeling and experiencing of the world, and his suffering of this process.

The central motif to which the author primarily relates can be considered the imagery of our planet. Dominik visualizes its representation in the form of a globe in a historical scene, geometry, or in a ruined concrete form. In the history of geometry, or the reconstruction of the world based on primitive calculations, the author sees the objectification of naive information and past projections of ideas about how our knowledge and calculations have shaped beliefs about the way all life works. This group of images is preceded by the motif of cables, which as a metaphor for connection and communication, the artist drowns in lava, or destroys their strict form and meaning into an organic form. Another continuity is formed by the construction motifs, where the craft objects ( the builder's spoon and plumb bob ) directly influence the behaviour of the material and evoke magic - the process when the material changes its aggregate, hardens, and this moment is the miracle that holds everything together.

The final images present fictional monuments highlighting either an important scientific moment (the splitting of the atom) or a tool of discovery (the compass and telescope). The artist intended to create them out of a sense of disappointment at forgetting the key moments of discovering knowledge. The artist has over-dimensioned such scenes and set them in a natural situation where the temporality of these images may not be clear. The painter's execution settles the fictional monuments into a vibrant atmosphere and naive manuscript. The scene itself is painted "excruciatingly pretty" for added disturbance when looking at the painting. The supporting image, Splitting the Atom with an Axe, may not conclusively determine whether this monument was already built in this condition or whether it was destroyed gradually or by someone else. The breaking of the tripod leg of the telescope with the scythe means the impossible view forward (although - looking into space we can see the past, however .. ). The compass with only one cardinal point (south) represents the lost orientation in this world and its clear direction.

The micro stories of all the objects painted with a different process reflect, as always, the condition of this world.