Zuzana Füsterová

Zuzana Füsterová graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in the mid-1990s, at a time when an ambitious post-revolutionary generation had appeared that dominated the art scene.

Füsterová remained in the background. Not because the quality of her work was poor, but because she is someone who is not much involved in public life. She says the current trends represent an outside world that she does not take much notice of. Instead, she turns her attention inward. (Sometimes, when she feels it is right, she puts aside her art and simply observes her own consciousness.) However, this immersion in her own being creates its own wider contexts and connections, which lead to the discovery of generally valid archetypes. The result is spiritual, metaphysical work that defies the customary models of its time and is inspired by archetypal emotions and experiences.

This is true even of her first works created while she was studying at AVU. These are illuminated objects experimenting with light and dark. The basis is formed by ingeniously designed light boxes that the artist exhibits in complete darkness. The box is made up of a black glass layer that is covered in letters or hermetic symbols (e.g. The Sephirotic Tree). Mirrors are installed in the box that the viewer does not see and that multiply the image to infinity. The resulting patterns of light change with the viewer’s angle of view. In these works the artist comes close to the tunnel concept of the sensory evocation of transcendence. We stand before a world of archetypal spaces dominated by feelings of ambiguity, elusiveness, variability and the non-definable.

Over recent years her interest in the phenomenon of darkness has led Füsterová to an expressive experience of deep darkness: a week spent in complete isolation and total darkness in a single room. The archetypal experience of vast emptiness in absolute darkness was a profound experience for the artist during this experiment. One thing she learned was that you begin to see pictures and visions in the dark, while questions such as who am I, what is Man, what is the world, what is thought take on an urgent presence.

This mystical immersion in a psycho-spiritual “other world” is characteristic of Füsterová’s later work too. This includes paintings created from 2001 onwards. These are images that are created through a long process of the application of colours in several (sometimes up to ten) layers. The artist applies a thin smear of acrylic paint on a soaked canvas. She then moves the canvas and allows the paint to trickle. She wipes away the paint and applies further layers using a spray gun filled with light paint or just water. The result are abstract images which are not, however, simply a game played with forms. Her paintings are reminiscent of the world of Mark Rothko, and are not simply compositions of coloured surfaces but the expression of deeper spiritual meanings. Rothko’s simple coloured compositions give the impression that they contain a specific and profound truth, as though they were the consequence of long, arduous mediation. Rothko’s canvases without specific forms represent the true lesson of abstract expressionism, a direct response to the unfathomable mystery of the human soul. Füsterová takes up this theme in her paintings, of which she says: “I am concerned with washing and emptying, disengaging from any content and imagination. The images remain simply a kind of veil of something that no longer exists and remains empty.” She drew here on her experience of the dark and her solitude within it, a black solitude in which the space is experienced with the body and through sensory deprivation.

Füsterová’s life and work is inspired by archetypal emotions and experiences that lead to a spiritual understanding of the world. Her work appears to be insulated from the context of prevailing conceptual tendencies, though within the context of the development of 20^th century art it has its unique place and a worthy status within the development of 21^st century art too.

Petr Veselý, Od prvních sympózií Zpřítomnění ... In: Zpřítomnění V. (katalog bienále v Dolních Kounicích 2008).

Jiří Zemánek, Ejhle - světlo! / o archetypální povaze světla. In: Ejhle světlo (katalog výstavy v Moravské galerii v Brně 2003-2004), str. 59, 61.

Jiří Zemánek, Zuzana Füsterová prezentuje ... In: Nirguna (katalog výstavy v Domě umění v Českých Budějovicích 2001).

Hana Petlachová, Světlo. Ateliér, září (?) 2000.

Zbyněk Sedláček, Letní hry se světlem. Literární noviny, září (?) 2000.

Milan Weber, Výtvarnice Z.F. Líbá krásu na ústa prázdna. MF Dnes (Morava a Slezsko), 5.5.1999, str. 3.

Jiří Valoch, Vztah světla a pohybu ... In: Zuzana Füsterová Něco - nic (katalog výstavy v

Galerii mladých U dobrého pastýře v Brně 1997).

Jiří Zemánek, Tvorba Zuzany Füsterové ... In: Zuzana Füsterová Něco - nic (katalog výstavy v Galerii mladých U dobrého pastýře v Brně 1997).

Jiří Valoch, Zuzana Füsterová. In: 13. Mednarodni bienále male plastike (katalog výstavy v Galerii Murska Sobota 1997), str. 50-53.

Zbyněk Sedláček, Zuzana Füsterová, Detail 3-4/ll, listopad 1997, str. 43.

Robert Inhof, Nekaj – nič Zuzane Füsterove. Delo, 16.8.1997 (Murská Sobota).

Marcel Fišer, Pod egidou tvůrčího principu aneb Interakce na Klenové. Týdeník Klatovska, 7.5.1996 (viz též katalog Interakce), str. 8.

Věra Jirousová, Setkání pod Sefirotickým stromem. Lidové noviny, 25.6. 1996.

Martina Pachmanová, Za uměním na konec světa. Ateliér, 19/12.9.1996, str. 7.

Jiří Zemánek, I lavori di Zuzana Füsterova á ... In: Proposte Scambio 1996 - Una finestra sull´Est (katalog výstavy v Galeria San Filippo v Turíně), str. 35.

Stanislav Badis (M.Vojtěchovský), Podrůží a podzemí aneb Nutnost si v klidu popovídat. Ateliér, 19/12.9.1996, str. 7.

Miloš Vojtěchovský, In: SubRosa I. symposium (katalog sympózia), Nadace Hermit, 1996.

Lisa Parola, Alla San Filippo II vento dell´Est. Torino sette, N.403, 14-20. června 1996.