Archivist of Hybrids

About

The prevailing consensus in contemporary societal discourse is that nature had been irreversibly affected by human activity. Whether we are talking about climate change or plastic pollution, the changes converge around a single agent. They can only be mitigated, but not reverted to their pre-existing state.

This is probably why there is a growing voice in contemporary art that is looking for ways to function in this changed regime and how to grasp this new state of the world. The exhibition "Archivist of hybrids" is a project that builds on previous authorial series of Ľudmila Machová. Her work so far, be it paintings, objects, installations, videos and the creation of experimental sound compositions, has dealt with the boundaries of our environment and the materials that have been directly created or modified by humans. Thematically, she has been concerned with personal and public space, with " de-naturalisation," with the search for a model of human coexistence with nature and its ambivalent relationship to it.

In her latest works, she pushes the boundaries between the genres she uses as well as the boundary between the natural and the unnatural - her works retain the distinctive qualities of painting, but she combines them with locally found materials. Her filigree approach is similar to jewellery work, and this is no coincidence – Machová's objects began as small, wearable compositions that later grew into larger objects. The process of collecting and creating archives of site-specific situations becomes important to her and she connects them in a non-invasive way. The artist therefore uses a minimum of coupling elements, for example, and looks for ways in which the elements can hold together simply by virtue of their properties.

They thus become a kind of hybrid, a living organism that resigns itself to differences of material substance. Fragments of the space of industrialised landscape thus demonstrate the impossibility of separating the natural and the artificial. Machová creates objects and painting installations from waste materials which she combines with natural materials. It is very difficult to distinguish twig from wire, hemp from artificial fibres and plastic from translucent mica. It is impossible to separate them physically, but also mentally and it is necessary to treat them as a whole. In addition to the site-specific properties of the elements she collects, their symbolic value is also important to her: she is choosing on purpose empty shells, dry, dead natural plants, or plants that are extremely resilient even in harsh conditions or sensitive to the presence of toxins (ivy, lichens, etc.). She appreciates their resilience, combined with their fragility. In connection to abandoned buildings and other objects left behind by people, she thematizes the melancholy, the fragility but also the potential endurance of this connection.

Small or larger objects and paintings spontaneously overgrow the gallery rooms. It is precisely this liveliness and vitality that interests the artist and that she seeks in combinations of elements with extremely diverse origins and essence.

The boundaries of painting and object are not clearly defined here. The object extends the field of the classical painting in the form of hanging or static elements that create the illusion of space. Painting, on the other hand, enters into objects in the form of canvas fragments. Individual works can remind of small inorganic formations or proto-architectures and human corporeality through the colours and haptics they evoke. Machová invites the viewer into a shared space, an environment in which the human and the natural merge into one particular symbiotic meditative whole.

The shapes of plants, figures and animals are naturally intertwined here. The motif of the shelter/shell is another recurring element, whether in the form of an actual natural shell or in the shape of objects that invite one to hide or to interact. The surrender to possible natural interconnections despite the difference, the liveliness despite the fragility, and the search for safety in the shifting conditions of the exhibition's taking over the space is something that can be described as a kind of softskill "survival guide" in the new world.

Ľudmila Machová (*1990) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava (Studio mal + by, Doc. Mgr. Klaudia Kosziba, ArtD. and Atelier +- XXI, prof. Daniel Fischer, akad.mal.). In 2014 she completed one-semester internship within the Erasmus program at the University of Porto, Faculty of Fine Arts in Portugal. In 2017 and 2018 she was a finalist of the VUB Foundation Award. She has participated in several group exhibitions in Slovakia (including Bratislava, Žilina, Topoľčany) and abroad (Porto, Ostrava). In 2021 and 2022 she participated in the DOM festival. She also presented her work in a number of solo exhibitions, e.g. at the Liptovská galéria P. M. Bohúňa, at the Municipal Gallery in Rimavská Sobota or the Nitra Gallery. She lives and works in Bratislava.