Window to peace

The 43rd art-feature Windows to Peace references the demanding political world situation. Curator Alberta selected 19 striking works (including 4 sculptures) from the BURN-IN portfolio by three artists Ladislav Černý, Ellen Semen and Susanne Guzei-Taschner. Works, some of which were created years ago and currently have the highest relevance. The themes of tolerance, international understanding, and peace, but also war, aggression, weapons, and nuclear bombs play a major role.

In the virtual show, the artists, each in their own personal way, reveal threats, grievances and injustices that have been observed for a long time, but have been treated only superficially.

BURN-IN presents the works in a sacred, virtual space, giving the works a remarkable setting. Unfortunately, BURN-IN does not currently own 3-D models of the majority of the sculptures. Therefore, for now, we present these works only in the photo gallery and the list of works, but not in the virtual space.

Ladislav Černý

Ladislav Černý's (painter, sculptor) installation Window inspired curator Alberta to the exhibition title. An old, crumbling window, in which all the glass is still present, sits diagonally on a red cube. Black paint, reminiscent of tar, flows gently over the object. The window seems to slowly sink into the ash. At the same time, the glassy window expands the horizon, creating hope and the prospect of peace.

Černýs monumental, powerful sculptures (Pearl, Time and Safe) from 2012 and 2013 make one feel the imprisonment, as it were, physically. In his paintings he presents suffering homeless, the girl from Luxembourg, a night watch, the tear II, the roulette, the conscience and the abstract large format Mees (200 x 311 cm).

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Ellen Semen

The Floral Militancy, a major cycle of the painter Ellen Semen, shows blunt martial aggression embedded in a floral setting marked by beauty. The work the Desert Flower thrives on the stark contrast of the girlish general (conceived as a comic figure) playfully conducting the army on innocent white flowers. In the painting Trying to Forget the rest of the World a pair of lovers rest in the chalice of a deep blue flower. The couple creates its own cocoon, spins in, escapes from reality and dreams of a peaceful future, while the soldiers in the background continue the war unabated. In the work Probability 1:3 flirts an innocent girl dreamily through a huge sea of sunflowers. In the background, one recognizes the cone of an atomic bomb and senses the approaching threat to the world.

Susanne Guzei-Taschner

For textile artist and painter Susanne Guzei-Taschner, the focus is not on aggression; rather, the artist transformsShe the major themes of nature and transforms them. In Nature.Ritual.Space. colour creates a sacred space that seems timeless, independent of religions. In her object images, she questions systems. Verwebene Landschaft, Ritual, Rhythmus and Verborgene Schichten are almost monochrome assemblages that live on Guzei-Taschner's masterful topographical accuracy and are again clearly enhanced by painting with accentuating color spaces. The complex pictorial collages are given a remarkable plasticity and independence by the independent mix of materials (fabrics, canvases, jute, nets, cords, alluvial woods, and stones). Complex structures emerge, new orders - ritual spaces - that communicate with the viewer through their own codes and open a truly spectacular window to peace, the sustainable harmony between nature and humanity.