Lenka Vítková

“A bad example of the use of gravitation – hanged great grandma.” (LV, 2010)

Lenka Vítková is an artist who follows up on the stream of conceptual and post-conceptual ar,t which was opened up in the Czech environment by Jiří Valoch. In spite of her reductive approach to fabric, we can track down the omnipresent lyricism in her work. Her texts, as well as paintings are fragmentary. For the external order she maintains picturesqueness in her paintings and texts, but at the same time fills them with subversiveness. Everything develops in The Refrain (exhibition Refrain, Gallery Svit, 2014). In her existing painting development she has gone from expression, through reductive formalism, to quite performance during painting that she does not record. Text, photography, installation or song are equal media in her work.

Recurring elements in her work include a small branch (little shrub, globural or circular objects (little planet, balloon, ball lightning, hoop) and figure. Already at the time she entered the local art scene, she sensed that individualism is outdated, and she started to choose various forms of cooperation for her exhibitions.

The multilevel effect of her paintings is supported by the ambiguity of Pansies (2005) which, viewed from different distances, turn into skulls. For this series of paintings she found the space – small pavilion 3 x 10 m – at the Olomouc exhibition grounds Flora, which she started to manage as a curator following her exhibition. Until the year 2010 she organized a number of exhibitions for her art colleagues in “36”. During the last year she cooperated with Blanka Švédová on the preparation of the program.

Another series of painting of various black dresses, exhibited at NoD in the exhibition They Stood and Waited for Them to Show Up (2008) covers her with an inversion. By way of a missing figure she gives a vivid picture of corporeality, which is characteristic for her. She came close to another form of distance corporeality in her collective work with Tereza Velíková, where they examined the walking and movement of man in space (Walking, Notes to Walking, two collateral exhibitions, Jelení, Karlin Studios, 2011). Related to walking are also her paintings of walking on all fours from the year 2014. Simultaneously by multiplying one element – a black dress – with minor variations where individual paintings blend into a whole of a barcode she refers to working with text.

She introduced text without paintings in the Gallery Pavilon one year later at the exhibition titled And She Said:. One of the three exhibits displayed was an audio-text video title Dream Book (3 min 51 sec) and it contained a conflict between the spoken word and text image. There was an immediate feeling of a violation of linear truthfulness. A similarly disturbing impression comes from the audio-recording with the repeating sentence “A bad example of gravitation, hanged great grandma.”, which Lenka Vítková used at the exhibition in the Gallery Ve Sklepě, 2010. Quite light, on the contrary, is the impression from her recording of a ride through empty sheets of a text editor accompanied by the sound of a romantic song (Without Title, 2010, 1 min 17 sec), where we can see work with absence.

In cooperation with Markéta Lisá, Ondřej Petrlík and Filip Cenek (graphic design), she has been publishing a magazine for poetry titled Mamka (Mom) since 2012. Further, she participates in various projects, e.g. Audiofenky (Markéta Lisá, Kateřina Zochová and Lenka Vítková) or rtf (Lenka Vítková & Markéta Lisá). In addition to Tereza Velíková she cooperated on exhibitions with, for example, Pavel Sterec (Gallery Fotograf, 2011) or Ondřej Vinš (Gallery sam83, 2014). At two exhibitions she was represented, following the initiative of the curators, together with the already mentioned Jiří Valoch (Kabinet T., 2011; Studio of Josef Sudek, 2013). During her thesis work at the Academy of Fine Arts, she continued with her curator activities and she organized the exhibition The Waste Land, which concerned the topic of her doctoral work Texty ve vizuálním umění (Texts in Visual Art). (Tranzitdisplay, 2011; exhibiting: Rashid Johnson, Zbigniew Libera, Jan Nálevka, Jiří Thýn, Sue Tompkins; accompanying event: Jiří Valoch read his unpublished conceptual texts).

Kurátorské projekty: The Waste Land, Tranzitdisplay, Praha, 2011 Za hřbety knih, které jsem nečetla. Studenti Vladimíra Skrepla a Jiřího Kovandy, Letohrádek Hvězda, Praha, 2011 Místo a formule, GASKartfest, Kutná Hora, 2009 (Ján Mančuška, Patricie Fexová, Sláva Sobotovičová, Jiří Thýn, Vasil Artamonov – Alexey Klyuykov, Pavel Sterec, Martin Zet) Lovci lebek, s Edith Jeřábkovou, Galerie Klatovy/Klenová – Pardubice – Regensburg, 2007 36, prostor pro současné umění v Olomouci, 36 výstav v letech 2006–2010

Edith Jeřábková: Obrazárna. Ateliér 25–26 , 15. 12. 2005 Pavel Preisner: LenkaVítková – Obrazárna. ProstorZlín, 1/2006 Zuzana Štefková: Stály a čekaly až se objeví. Ateliér 3, 7. 2. 2008 Tony Ozuna: Quiet drama. The Prague Post, April 30th, 2008 Edith Jeřábková: Zvolna začínám chápat, jak se asi cítí oliva v martini. Kotzmannová a Vítková v Huntkastner Artworks. Art & antiques, květen 2008 JiříPtáček: Mezi “s” a “v” je rozdíl. Nový prostor 302, 7. 4. 2008 Eva Krátká: Lenka Vítková. A řekla: GaleriePavilon, březen–duben 2009, Flash Art.CZ/SK Vol.III, No. 11–12.   http://www.rozhlas.cz/mozaika/radiogalerie/_zprava/lenka-vitkova--1018325 Eva Krátká: Lenka Vítková : pohyby fragmentů jazyka. Fotograf, roč. 12, 2013, č. 22, s. 80-83

výběr textů, které souvisí s uměleckou praxí Lenky Vítkové: Edith Jeřábková a Lenka Vítková: Plán b, Umělec 3/2006 Lenka Vítková: Now art is here: Jiří Valoch, Umělec 1/2007 Lenka Vítková: Hlášená demonstrace / Rozhovor se skupinou Rafani, Umělec 3/2007 Lenka Vítková: Q: protisměr, Umělec  2/2008 (3D práce Igora Korpaczewského) Místo před obrazem (Maria Lassnig v Serpentine Gallery), Umělec 2/2008