The duo exhibition of sculptor Pavla Sceranková and painter Vladimír Houdek brings together works that explore the tension between structure and fragility, the personal and the universal, the individual and the relational.
Outer space and the human means of exploring and understanding it have long been central to Sceranková’s artistic practice. Rather than approaching the cosmos through distant or abstract concepts, however, she often grasps it through the mundane: everyday objects, broken apart and reassembled, become a pathway towards larger principles governing bodies, matter and their relations. In Small Galaxy Collision, a broken teapot becomes part of a kinetic system in which its fragments repeatedly come together in a fleeting celestial phenomenon, only to separate again and continue circulating along their individual orbits. Elsewhere, figures of dancers seem to perform at the edge of time and space, levitating or otherwise challenging the rules of gravity.
In his most recent paintings, Vladimír Houdek places a solitary figure with an abstracted head against an apparently infinite background: a person in a suit, suspended alone within a vast field of color. His geometric works approach similar questions through seemingly universal systems. Circles multiply, overlap, connect and disconnect from their counterparts, following spatial principles that appear to exceed the rules of Euclidean geometry. His collage and mixed-media works introduce surprisingly tactile and ritualistic elements: masks and fragmented bodies disrupt the geometric rules, only to submit again to an order they might themselves have helped to create.
Alone in Space reflects on the paradox that, while we inhabit a vast space structured by countless relations, forces and principles, some dimensions of our experience remain inherently our own. Being alone here does not necessarily mean being lonely. Rather, it points towards the fundamentally non-transferable nature of individual experience. We may dance together, move around one another and briefly share the same orbit, but what our dancing body actually feels remains ours alone.
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Pavla Sceranková (born 1980 in Košice, Slovakia) is a prominent contemporary sculptor, visual artist, and educator based in Prague. She co-leads the Intermedia 2 studio at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU) alongside Dušan Zahoranský. Sceranková studied at AVU, completing her PhD in Fine Arts in 2011 and receiving her habilitation in 2021. Her international scholarships and residencies include UdK Berlin, Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, Coopérative Méduse in Québec and the Visegrad Artist Residency Program in Budapest. She was twice a finalist for the Jindřich Chalupecký Award (2007, 2015) and received the Václav Chad Award (2009) and Cyprián Award (2007). Her work has been presented at institutions including Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; National Gallery Prague; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; Galerie Rudolfinum and Prague City Gallery; and Moravian Gallery, Brno. Her work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery Prague, Slovak National Gallery and Prague City Gallery, as well as in European private collections. She has also realized a number of permanent works in public space.
Vladimír Houdek (born 1984 in Nové Město na Moravě, Czech Republic) is a leading Czech painter and visual artist based in Prague. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague (AVU) in the Painting Studio of Vladimír Skrepl and later taught at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno (FaVU).
Houdek received the Jindřich Chalupecký Award in 2012 and the Critics’ Award for Young Painting in 2010. His solo exhibitions include National Gallery Prague; Museum Kampa, Prague; Kunstpalais Erlangen; Mönchehaus Museum, Goslar; Overbeck-Gesellschaft, Lübeck; Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna; and Galerie Kai Erdmann, Berlin and Hamburg. His work has also been presented at Ludwig Forum Aachen, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Ludwig Museum Budapest, Kunsthalle im Lipsiusbau, Dresden, and the Museum of Fine Arts – Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest. His works are represented in major institutional and private collections across Europe and the United States, including National Gallery Prague, Prague City Gallery, Museum Kampa, Museum of Fine Arts Budapest, Kunstpalais Erlangen, Art Collection Telekom, the Schürmann Collection, Olbricht Collection, Barbara and Aaron Levine Collection, and Kunsthalle Praha.