Date
Opening: November 20, 6 pm
Opening hours: Mon–Fri 09–21, Sat 10–20
Location: C.0HYB4 Galerie (entrance through the café)
Guided tour: December 14, 6pm
Eliška Šárková's (CZE / 1984) exhibition begins with the themeof the Syrian landscape, asking a simple, partly childishly naive question: "Are you Happy?" This direct inquiry could be overlooked in the perception of the insincerity of the world of human relations. "Are you happy?" my Syrian colleague asks me coincidentally in 2017 in Reykjavík, Iceland, and I can't get this open question out of my head. After all, I have never met anything more heartfelt, and his question, for its childlike sincerity, touched me to the very core.
At first I answer: "Yes, I am happy," however, immediately afterwards I came to a deeper reflection on the truth ofthis statement. Am I really happy in my life? I ask myself a question, but I am unable to answer. A cascade of situations, daily thoughts and responsibilities appear to me, and I cannot detach myself from the feeling that I am missing something for happiness in life. At that moment, however, I tune in, shift myself to the landscape of joy, share it with self, and honestly admit that I am really happy, at least for a moment, for three seconds, if you like – I am filled and overflowing with happiness. All of a sudden I'm coming back, a little different. Happiness is to be sought, but onemust first simply ask and think. "Are you happy?"
It has been a whole year since I met Eliška Šárková in the house U Kamenného zvonu and had the opportunity to talk about her work and insight. It didn't take long and we arranged a meeting in the studio, where the author dazzled me with the scope of her work, the depth of the processed scenes and the precision that, as I could tell, accompanies each of her works down to the smallest details. It is this precision (based on the medium of a photograph of a FAMU graduate in Prague in 2015) that is the driving force the author tosearch for and create new procedures for transforming photography and moving it with artisanal perfection into different positions of the work of art.
Exhibition "Are you Happy?" offers a brief cross-section of the author's work between 2011 and 2023. I would not like to go too far into the essence of the work itself, but I will emphasize that Eliška Šárková and her work are a discovery for me, and I am surprised that this versatile and sensitive author has not been given more space. Her work is full of light and shifts us to a subtle world of often unseen, while its processing is able to communicate in an international language. The final selection is ultimately reduced so that it communicates with ease with the space of the White Gallery ina harmonious composition. The space is reserved for works that havenot been exhibited mainly in a gallery environment, while some haveeven experimental positions based on discussions between the curatorand the author.
