TEREZA A GIARDINO
Curators: Veronika Marešová & Marcela Straková, GASK, 2024
The exhibition Tereza and Giardino by Tereza Brichtová (1978) presented the painting work of the Mikulov-born artist, who graduated from Professor Adéla Matasová’s Studio of Conceptual and Intermedia Tendencies at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague. The group of exhibited large-format watercolours is connected with a nine-month concept during which the artist created an entirely new garden so that it would fulfil aspects of utility, durability, and beauty. This garden is not botanical but metaphorical, working with memories and symbols.
The artist herself aptly comments on the artistic process in the following words: “My work is the observation and recording of my desire for a truly personal background. The almost daily sketches of my subconscious reflect good and bad memories. I stylise everything into the form of a visual herbarium of lived and unlived (dreamed) experiences. Plants and flowers are for me entirely direct symbols: of loss, pain, love, illness, solitude, but also joy…”
Tereza and Giardino is an artistic parallel to the artist’s inner landscape. Her garden opens up a space for regeneration; it tends to the world of ideas with the promise of a harvest. Brichtová’s works record a processual development and a sustained care for a wounded soul. This is the restorative putting down of roots, the dividing and cutting of new rhizomes in the form of “cross-breeding minds.” It also reflects the careful selection of quality seeds, the extermination of pests, and records all the hard work that is necessary for a joyful mental harvest.
