Laurelates of III. Portrait Triennial 2021

The International Commission of the 3rd Portrait Triennial has determined two laureates within the framework of an open call in 2021 - Slovak painter Martina Mäsiarová (*1991) and Czech visual artist and activist Lukáš Houdek (*1984). By presenting them together, we continue the tradition, in which, for example, in 1988 there was a solo exhibition of the historically first winner of the Triennial, the exceptional (photo-)realist painter Jozef Srna (1930-1992), whose works were therefore included in the collection of The Peter Michal Bohúň Gallery In Liptov Region. Although the current exhibition consists from two completely separate collections, they are connected by a decent conceptualization, a moody work with space and in space, as well as a certain ephemerality of expression, which refers to a larger, more concrete or monumental whole (story).

In practically every single work, Mäsiarová's work is linked to a real or fictitious plot framework, from which she offers us very subtle unnoticed (sometimes hard to see with the naked eye) traces. These traces can take the form of a drawing, a photograph, visual poetry, a text link, or even a performance. Through them, the author makes subtly non-narrative situations accessible to the viewer or participant, which are quite resistant to the fast prose reading that we are used to today. On the contrary, like poetry, they first of all force us to detect the type of their specific poetics, tune in to it, and only then surrender to the actual reading. This is also Mäsiarová's current presentation - it consists of a small amount of personal drawings or references, which she practically does not adjust or limit. The viewer gets as close to them as the author herself, which creates an intimate contact, including the risk that something will be damaged. Using the example of the work of Louise Bourgeois or Joseph Beuys, we know that small drawings or textual records often form a counterpart to more monumental works that either politicize or, on the contrary, individualize or intimate. Mäsiarová's exhibition shows her thinking right in the middle of the search for such a unifying or resulting pendant.
Her diary works form natural thematic circuits, but at the same time they do not cycle in individual poetics, they are freely rearranged, and it is obvious that within the framework of her "poetry collection" they are open to continuation in any direction.