Vlčina

Vlčina, an exhibition by Lenka Černota at Prague’s Bold Gallery, presents a cross-section of the artist's work, with an emphasis on recent large-scale canvases primarily depicting wolves. The artist’s creative coexistence with these predatory yet mythical animals evolves from realistic depictions toward abstraction, loosely suggesting a "wolf’s-eye perspective." The paintings explore the boundary between the cultivated and the wild within us, dominated by a bold, almost radiant color palette. The artist creates her works partly without brushes, using her bare hands to layer or scratch deep into the surface, complementing the pieces with sketches and handwritten records of thoughts and emotions. Her raw approach is further evidenced by her placing some "wolf" canvases in inaccessible parts of the Beskydy mountains, leaving them for weeks at the mercy of wildlife and the elements.

In addition to a curatorial essay, reproductions of paintings, portraits of the artist, and photographs of a live wolf moving through the gallery space, the exhibition catalogue includes nocturnal images from forest camera traps. These are inserted into the square-format catalogue as a separate, smaller booklet. The presence of the wolf is evoked in the graphic design by bright points on a black field – like wolves’ eyes glowing in the dark – and hand-applied black ink representing ubiquitous wolf tracks. These tracks, imprints, and scars, which also reference the artist’s painting technique, are captured on the matte surface of the catalogue cover. The color palette of the graphic design draws from the artist’s name (Černota meaning "darkness" or "blackness") and the imagery of a dark wolf spirit, using a black-and-white scheme to let the intense tones of the paintings stand out. Along with the catalogue, a leaflet featuring an installation floor plan was also produced.

Initator/client:
Bold gallery

Year:
2020

Design:
Tomáš Brychta
Sára Bergmannová
Karla Gondeková

Typography:
GT Super