Veronika Šrek Bromová / BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL

OPENING
December 2, 2021 from 7 pm

How much is the balance between the natural world and civilization disturbed? A multimedia artist, Veronika Šrek Bromová draws us into a suggestive personal world, into an environment in which she finds herself in close proximity to nature and at the same time absorbs the pressures of civilization. She scans the reality that surrounds her, parodies the digital world of children's animated characters, though simultaneously using digital technologies to record her communication with the natural space of the place where she lives. She captures the landscape with a moving cell phone, creating thus a disturbing drawing. The Earth's surface she compares to the surface of the body - the skin, and perceives it as the upper layer of reality. Through her own bodily experience and individual perceptions, she tries to come to the surface and thus discover the possibilities of a multi-layered perception of such a reality. Revealing the hidden and the unconscious, she uses references to mythology, rituals and shamanism, in which she sees the connection between Man and Nature and a possible path to healing. She connects the gesture and the object with the ritual, significantly applying the element of performance. The result is a recording, a fingerprint, a manipulated photo, video or a site specific installation. Through an internal statement, Bromová delivers a general message that points to the division of this world.

Curator: Adriana Primusová

VERONIKA ŠREK BROMOVÁ
Veronika Šrek Bromová was born in Prague in 1966. She graduated from the Václav Hollar Secondary Art School in Prague and in 1993 from the Studio of Illustration and Graphics led by prof. Jiří Šalamoun at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. In 1997 and 2000 she was among the finalists of the Jindřich Chalupecký Award. Her work received a response abroad in 1999 representing the Czech Republic at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art. In 2002–2011 she ran the New Media Studio 2 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague. Until now, she is engaged in pedagogical activities, now she teaches at AAU Prague Cross media Studio. She specializes in art therapy and psychotherapy, organizational and curatorial work.

She has lived in Eastern Bohemia in the village of Střítež near Polička for more than ten years, where she settled with her husband Ivan Šrek and their children in the Chaos Homestead. Here, it organizes a year-round exhibition, educational and cultural program in the Cabinet Chaos Gallery and organizes art meetings and residential creative stays and workshops.

She is one of the female protagonists of the 1990s, bringing an experiment of manipulated photography and a provocative artistic gesture to the Czech environment. Her work is mainly associated with photography, but she focuses on video, spatial installations and objects, drawing and painting, and her work has a strong performative character.

Part of the implementation was created thanks to the financial support of the ICRC - creative scholarship, topic: Between Good and Evil.

SMETANAQ GALLERY
SmetanaQ Gallery is an art gallery believeing that art belongs to every household. The gallery connects the presentation of beginning artists with well-established authors, across artistic styles, gender and age. Through careful curatorial selection, it gives voice and space to those who want to present their work to the general public. It focuses on connecting the art world with the commercial world, thus creating a space for interaction, discussion and mutual inspiration. Last but not least, its goal is to enliven public space with art. That’s why artists exhibiting in the gallery also present large-format works in the windows of the Facade Gallery.