Jana Babincová

Jana Babincová has been working with the principle of coding for many years. Her paintings feature forms of geometric abstraction with sharp lines and edges. However, the encoded content is usually very personal and emotional, from the text of a prayer in five languages, to a letter to an unborn daughter, to the tones of her favourite song. In most of her paintings encoding texts, Babincová tends to work with the intuitive possibilities of decoding images rather than the precise deciphering of individual content by the viewer. In addition to text, the artist works with music and sound, as well as with structures derived from everyday life. Most projects are based on a simple inspiration. However, there then follows the process of realisation, finding the principle of coding, and transcription, which depends on the character of individual projects. The resulting paintings are characterised by a precision bordering the digital image. The personal component of individual themes is often only hinted at by colour scheme or fleeting symbols.

In her most recent projects Babincová expands considerably the theme of encoded images, branches out into other media, and explores the relationship between painting, sound and object as well as performance. At the exhibition in Gallery Aula at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the Brno University of Technology (Leave a Message, 2011) she reacted with a mural to the event entitled Test Lab - Solo (2011) by Roman Štětina, in which the artist shatters glass side drums by drumming. Here Babincová worked with mathematical sequences and the possibility of a visual transcription of sound. In the project for Berlin Model (Suchý bod, 2012) she combined a mural inspired by the ingredients of sushi with her own food in a visual food tasting performance. This was followed by Dance Floor (2012), during which she recorded a visual transcription of her own dance performance on the floor of Gallery A.M.180. As part of the international group exhibition 16 - 20 000Hz organised at MeetFactory in 2013, Babincová introduced an installation derived from the rhythm of a song by The Present Moment. The artist transferred the individual tones and rhythms in accordance with preset rules to a line of six hundred hanging coloured sticks of wood that remind the viewer of an audio mixing console. Her most recent project Trans/in/form (2013) is a synthesis of painting and object. The theme is communication, though in abstracted form. The work is about the principle of transferring information between people and the shifts in meaning that take place in interpersonal communication. The output comprises two spatial cubes handing on the wall that define expressively and individually, though in this case somewhat more organically, the colour surface in a way that is typical of Babincová.

What is common to Babincová’s paintings and installations is the fact they evoke a certain previous action or message, which they summarise in a single moment that is visually arresting and yet a depersonalised, universal record. They engage the viewer’s imagination but in a non-directive way. They do not require strict decoding and do not force their content on the public. They are more like an autonomous record that only hints at the possibilities of reconstructing the original inspiration.

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