Vendula Chalánková

Vendula Chalánková is an unexpected surprise of the Brno stage. It is possible that if she didn’t bring a comics diary about her trip to India, she wouldn’t be noticed by Eskort gallery’s Jana Kalinová or Pavel Pražák, the “virtual soul” of the Magda web gallery.
It would be difficult to look for speculation in Chalánková. She is natural and warm. Her Indian diary documents no consistent story, she simply set single scenes side by side and described them laconically. This is positive proof that the best impressions one can have while traveling are those described in a straightforward way. The radical stylization is endearingly infantile and the colors are as bright as a tropical parrot. No joke crosses the border of sympathy with the things she draws. Not even when the people rudely argue with each other in her comics.
No wonder Kalinová decided to collect all these drawings and publish them as an anthology. Chalánková prepared the invitation to the Eskort gallery in her own way: She adapted a self-portrait of the Indie Twins duo (the Hošek siblings) from the preceding exhibition on the wall including herself, such that she is depicted hugging her friend, Anežka Hošková.
She hung picture-clothing on the walls—simple puzzles from small geometrical and monochrome canvasses. She is unbeatable in finding new and different uses. She cut out food package labels and created a nativity scene. One of her performances was particularly exceptional: she was begging on the street holding a sign asking for money to pay for a manicure. In doing so, she challenged the normal rules of begging: She sought money for a trivial thing yet refused a larger amount of money offered by a donor. Still, in a few hours, she got the money she needed for the manicure.
Chalánková studies in the studio of Vladimír Merta at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Brno. There is one very clear thing to say about her artistic perspective: For her the positive asset of creative work is the ability to show that nothing can be such that it ceases to be good at the same time. A tension arises from an uncertainty whether hers is an expression of an earthling or whether we might be dealing with something so good, it could only come from an alien.

http://www.galeriemagda.cz/gmagda/vch-02.html
http://environment.ffa.vutbr.cz/vystavky/vvencha.html

01.04.2004