Artist

MONIKA MICHALKO

Title

City Building I

Details

2018
Oil on cardboard
61,5 x 46 cm

About

Our perception is based on the phenomenon of pattern recognition, and Monika Michalko plays on this claviature like a virtuoso. The pictures have something musical about them, their fabulous forms inhabit a rhythmic space. Like punctuation, they appear in rows beside one another, or on top of one another, giving her paintings a distinct rhythm, lending them an intonation like a kind of poetic visual melody. Her motifs are strangely intricate, dreamlike and alien, displaced to an empire of dark shadows and blazing worlds of colour. And openings, again and again. Doors, windows, holes, that invite one to dive in even deeper, another puzzle, another possibility for interpretation presents itself. In the production process, figurative beginnings are repeatedly painted over. This gives rise to a dense, impenetrable patina, traces are smudged, covered, and shine through.
The layers of interpretation even grow into the depth of the paint applied, charge her paintings with a metaphysical level, compress and shift the interpretation options into the invisible.
Michalko’s work is, in the best sense, a summoning of the spirits in which she spins her very own plasma strings, a colourful carry on, and a wonderfully melodious gibberish.