Lucia Sceranková

Sceranková is often referred to as a photographer. However, in reality photography or video is simply a kind of consequent smoothing out of her multilayered, sensitive approach to the surrounding world, to whose details the artist relates in her works. From early on Sceranková was inclined more to manipulate than to replicate reality, for instance by planting out a flower bed in the shape of the inscription in I Seek U (2009) or building a monumental yet delicate and unstable pagoda from cards (Dom z karát / House of Cards, 2009). Her photographic work is analogous in approach, not in the technical sense (she often uses a digital camera), but in respect of the physical manipulation of the scenes created using both subtle and monumental interventions and gestures. The artist composes an entire environment, or, on the other hand, creates intimate spaces from small objects or cut-outs, moons hanging on thread, figures snipped into a lake of paper. She usually works in series in which the motifs of still life, landscape or the domestic sphere appear repeatedly, interpreted by means of illusory representation. Work with these generalises the relationship between reality and fiction, the shift in direct associations that evoke archetypal images into more mysterious, multilayered spheres playing with the viewer’s perception. Large scale prints in bespoke installations are often contrasted with smaller, less traditionally presented works, while as always the whole is always larger than the sum of its parts. The handmade approach to the creation of individual works is finally taken to the level of sophisticated presentation that thanks to the well known properties of photography embody a certain distance from the immediacy of the artist’s interventions.

In this respect a milestone in Sceranková’s oeuvre was her final examination work (Zázrak je na inom mieste, 2011), for which she was nominated for the Start Point award. She captured the magic, grandeur and drama of nature and mysterious corners of the world without even leaving the realm of her apartment. The raging sea cut out of paper extends around a conference table as a lacy blanket, a mythical swamp hides in a chest of drawers. By squeezing the shutter the mood of the scene becomes serious, the immediacy of the child’s imagination is transformed into a mysterious image, the game becomes a memory. The following series of photographs entitled Tichá voda brehy myje / Still Water Runs Deep (2012) continues to play with the domestic environment. In a kind of calm timelessness the artist captures both small and large deviations from “normality”. A huge stone is lost on the perfectly polished bedroom floor, a drop of coffee flows into the white clothing of a girl who is in no hurry to get anywhere (again, all created using scissors, glue, and the layering and re-photographing of scenes).

A shorter but fundamental episode in respect of her current work is Sceranková’s work with video, or rather animated image, in which a usually static camera captures the initial, domestically designed event: a yacht in water ruffled by a hairdryer, the grid of a fairytale forest printed on rotating slats that alternately conceal and reveal the figure behind (Carte Blanche, 2010).

Recent work has accentuated the artist’s interest in the surface, material and structure of objects, still life and subtle situations, e.g. broken flowers scattered on the ground (Kvetiny / Flowers, 2013), a piece of cloth reminiscent of a stain (Škvrna / Stain, 2013), or statuesque immobilised hair (Venuša / Venus, 2012). This brings to mind the process of wrinkling that had already appeared in her work. However, it has a clearer role to play in her most recent work. The structure whose line Sceranková follows with her lens does not have necessarily to be the surface of the object, but can be a network of paper folds that distort the original scene on the photograph and lend it another dimension (e.g. From Here to Eternity, 2013 or Nôž / Knife, 2013). From here there is only a small step towards spatial creation in which the scrunched up large format of the photograph becomes a sumptuous river (Rieka / River, 2014), or tiny little stones scattered around the gallery, the surface of which is formed from photographs of water (Hladina / Surface, 2013). In her most recent work Sceranková has been experimenting with disturbing the photographic surface and repositioning it on the horizontal or vertical axis of space, or by hanging it outside the gallery wall. Photography thus becomes an all-embracing medium that floats freely between external and internal borders and creates its own calm yet turbulent world.

Marie Kohoutová: Nebezpečné hry s otevřeným koncem Lucii Scerankové, recenze výstavy (ceskatelevize.cz)

Barbora Ševčíková: Slunce zavřené ve vitríne, recenze výstavy (artalk.cz)

Tereza Špinková: rozhovor, Lucia Sceranková (časopis Fotograf #19, 2012)

Michal Pěchouček: katalóg k výstavě 6. Zlínsky salón mladých, 2012

Lenka Sedláčková: Tichá voda břehy mele - Lucie Sceranková v Galerii mladých (Kulturissimo.cz, 2012)

Marek Pokorný: Lucia Sceranková (Magnus Magazine #3, 2012)

Travis Jeppesen: Katarina Hruskova & Lucia Scerankova @ the Slovak Embassy (Whitehotmagazine.com , 2012)

Edith Jeřábková: katalóg k výstavě START POINT PRIZE, 2011

Josef Vomáčka: recenze výstavy, Lucia Sceranková / Oheň, voda, vítr ví, 2011

Exhibitions´ Press Releaqses:

Jiří Ptáček: TZ Slunce ve vitríne, galerie Fotograf, Praha

Martin Mazanec: TZ Tichá voda brehy myje, Galerie mladých, Brno

Michal Pěchouček: TZ Ako doma, galerie 35m2, Praha

Michal Pěchouček: TZ Carte Blanche, galerie Hit, Bratislava