Your work intricately weaves medieval iconography with contemporary themes, creating a dialogue between past and present. What draws you to explore these historical visual narratives, and how do you see them resonating in today’s cultural landscape?
Yes, I am largely fascinated by the timelessness of medieval iconography: the rich symbolism, spiritual depth, and precise craftsmanship that characterize these visual narratives. Since childhood, I’ve had a need to understand the deeper layers of historical images, which naturally led me to study restoration at the School of Applied Art in Košice. It was there that my interest in craftsmanship and symbolism deepened, in languages that speak in allegories and metaphysical contexts. In medieval images, I find restraint and silence, which are revolutionary in their own way today, as a way of surviving in the ‘hyperculture’ of a burnt-out subject, caught in the cycle of pressure for performance and permanent production. In today’s world, increasingly disrupted by technology, alienation, and rapid cultural changes, these historical narratives act as a solid anchor point. They resonate with me as a reminder of mutual relationships, collective memory, and spiritual longing. By placing these symbols in contemporary contexts, I explore how ancient belief systems influence today’s fragmented cultural landscape, while critically reflecting on them and simultaneously paying homage to them. I’m concerned with that constant human desire for meaning and seemingly lost transcendence.
In your paintings, there’s a notable interplay between mysticism and modernity, often blending fantastical elements with neo-expressionist techniques. How do you balance these seemingly contrasting influences to craft your unique visual language?
This balance stems from my personal experience with paradox. I feel the need to connect the world of rationality with the world of intuitive experience. Mysticism with its deep symbolism and transcendent goals finds a convincing partner in the raw emotionality and immediacy of neo-expressionism. It’s not about contrast, but dialogue – between what is conscious and unconscious, light and shadow, vulnerability and strength. The techniques I use allow me to work with ‘material emotion,’ while the ‘mystical’ elements add depth and layers of meaning to the works. By oscillating between mystical calmness and expressive dynamics, I create images that invite both introspection and emotional resonance, a visual language that reflects the paradoxical nature of our time.
Archetypes play a central role in your art. Could you elaborate on how you select and reinterpret these symbols to reflect personal mythology and societal transformations?
Archetypes are fundamental to my practice because they represent universal truths and collective memories. I draw on Jung’s theory, according to which they function as psychological mirrors, reflecting deep social and individual tensions. I select those that have personal and cultural resonance and then reinterpret them through my own mythology. I connect them with alchemical images and current social motifs – identity crises, political and environmental issues. This alchemical process allows archetypes to mutate and reflect both my inner world and social transformations. Ancient symbols thus become dynamic entities, capable of communicating cultural psychology and stimulating personal and collective reflection.
Your education spans from the School of Applied Art in Košice to the University of Ostrava under Prof. Daniel Balabán. How have these academic experiences shaped your approach to painting and your exploration of themes like spirituality and hermeticism?
The precise discipline of restoration and traditional painting techniques that I acquired at the School of Applied Art in Košice built in me a deep respect for craft, precision, and historical context. My subsequent study at the University of Ostrava in the Painting I. studio under Prof. Daniel Balabán expanded my conceptual language, led me to experimentation and critical dialogue with contemporary artistic tendencies, especially with postmodern irony and philosophical discourse. This educational ‘arc’ provided me with a solid framework for creation where craftsmanship precision meets personal symbolism, experiment meets tradition, and painting becomes a place of spiritual and conceptual overlapping.
Your artistic language feels steeped in myth, mysticism, and personal symbolism. What role does enchantment play in your narrative building? Could beauty itself be a kind of mask?
Well yes, beauty can be both a mask and a portal. In my paintings, the viewer is often led first by form: shine, ornament, color harmony – but beneath it is a thin crack. That crack is intentional. I perceive enchantment as a strategy, not for aestheticization, but for opening. It’s a mechanism that allows the viewer to enter the painting, but may later discover that what glitters can also be deception. This fine line between visual pleasure and a deeper, sometimes disturbing layer of meaning is where tension is born. Beauty can thus be both truth and lie simultaneously. Orwell spoke of ‘doublethink,’ that we can believe two opposites at once. And it’s in this oscillation that I seek the power of the image.
The concept of metamodernism, oscillating between irony and sincerity, seems pertinent to your practice. Do you consciously align with this movement, and if so, how does it manifest in your exploration of nostalgia and innovation?
Metamodernism for me is not a movement or style, but rather a feeling, a kind of inner regime of being. I feel this oscillation between faith and skepticism, between the desire for meaning and awareness of its fragility. This feeling naturally projects into my work through a return to historical forms: illuminations, alchemy, mystical images, which, however, always carry an awareness of their own paradox. Nostalgia here doesn’t function as a sentimental escape, but as a tool of orientation, like a map in the constantly changing landscape of our present. In assembling fragments and their synthesis, in re-grasping lived meanings, I find the possibility to create a new whole, not perfect, but truthful precisely because of its incompleteness.
Your exhibitions, such as Faulty Dreams and Meanwhile in Reality, suggest a thematic exploration of perception and reality. What messages or questions do you aim to evoke in viewers through these titles and corresponding works?
These titles are more states of mind than definitive themes. ‘Faulty Dreams’ emerged during a period of disillusionment: from personal and social spheres, from the collapse of desires that may have been illusory from the start. ‘Meanwhile in Reality’ juxtaposes inner and outer worlds – what we experience and what is. Through exhibitions like ‘Faulty Dreams,’ ‘Meanwhile in Reality,’ or ‘Halfway to Nowhere,’ I try to prompt questions about where fiction ends and reality begins, and how these two planes influence each other. I want the viewer to ask: What do I believe? And what is just a dream?
The sacred and the profane coexist in your paintings, often side by side. In the context of our current theme, Gilded Lure, how do you view the role of contradiction and duality in crafting visual seduction?
In my work, the contrast between the sacred and the profane is more of a dynamic than an opposition. Visual seduction is a form of staging this tension, and the image thus balances between beauty and decay, between ornament and injury, between spiritual transcendence and physical reality. Gold as a symbol of light and divinity simultaneously carries within itself a sign of vanity, decadence, illusion. This ambiguity is key for me. I would like the viewer to feel attraction, but also uncertainty. To be unsure of exactly what they see, and perhaps for that very reason to look longer. In the context of Gilded Lure, I ask: What lures us today? Is it a deep call for transcendence, or just another well-designed simulacrum?
