Painting studio Delta

Foundations of the Painting studio Delta:

Images and the process of painting allow us to orient ourselves in the world.

The world is an image.

An image is the world.

Each student is a precious point of view within it.

But each student's work is also part of the flow of transformation of the medium of painting over time.

In this way, painters are in communication with painters of the past and propose solutions to painters of the future. In this sense, they contribute to the enrichment of the language of painting.

CONTINUITY is of great value in the painting studio as it is a bridge between the past, present and future.

Continuity in painting is also the foundation of a COMMUNITY of painters. Painting studio consciously protects the community of painting students and painters, which needs to be developed against the contemporary trend of atomisation and enclosure of individuals. One of the methods is the COLLABORATIVE PAINTING between students and teachers.

The current state of painting according to ,Network Painting’ is continued in the Painting studio Delta through the collaborative painting of teachers and experienced artists (both internal and external) with and among students. This allows us to bring the EXPERTISE of painting directly into the decision-making processes and it introduces the student to the immediate action of painting, the process, in the form of play.

Here at Painting studio, we consider expertise to be the main benefit of training for the student. Expertise is a combination of analysis, critique and reflection, both in relation to the current situation of painting and to the maturing point of view of the student.

For the language of painting is a form in a constant process of formation and re-formation.

This speaks to the studio's emphasis on the PROCESS, REGIMES and PROTOCOLS that lead to the emergence of contemporary painting.

In Painting studio Delta, practice is verified by theoretical points of departure and vice versa.

This is especially emphasised in the third degree, which we understand as a binomial theoretical and practical research, in which both fields evaluate each other, but also reconsider each other with new hypotheses.

At the same time, it is important for us to be an experienced support for students at all stages of their studies, on their individual journey, through the post-production of their work, to their establishment as new graduates in the art world in its current transformations.

The studio is also inextricably linked to defining the contemporary climate, the contemporary feeling of the world. Together we ask questions that need to be answered now.

However, this is often associated with negative feelings in the students, moving from helplessness to powerlessness and wandering in a cyclical repetition of dead-end schemes, leading to anger and sadness.

As part of the pedagogical process in the studio, we understand that these cannot be overlooked, but neither can they be used to drive the work.

It is necessary to learn to transform them by finding images of breathable worlds, of freedoms and potential commonality.

We recognise that artists touch a unique but fragile quality of life in their work: happiness.

It is with this in mind that we approach the creative process. In that way, trust has a chance to develop between all participants, leading to responsibility.

The head of the studio, Mgr. art. Rastislav Podhorský, ArtD.,

is a painter who works in the field of figuration, drawing, creating installations and writing essays within the theoretical reflection of art. All his oeuvre is characterised by a sense of situational tension, semantic ambiguity or paradox. His figures are instruments of image-making, but also objects of articulation of human becoming. He explores painting as an open but consistent field, seeking to develop a wide range of its possibilities in parallel with an understanding of its effects. His theoretical publication Prievozník - On People in Non-art and Figures in Art (VŠVU, Slovart) was published in 2017. He received his PhD with the thesis The Contradictor - Frames and latent possibilities of visual art. In 2017-2021 he was the head of the Painting Studio III at the Academy of Fine Arts, where he also taught the course Fundamentals of Painting. He is the winner of the VUB Foundation - Painting Award 2015 and his works have been exhibited in many European institutions. To date he has had fourteen solo exhibitions and many group exhibitions. He lives and works in Bratislava.   

Mgr. art. Matúš Novosad, PhD. 

is a painter, curator and art historian. His work focuses on the continuity of the configuration of paintings. He answers broad questions of contemporary painting, from abstraction to figuration. He is inspired by Mallarmé, but also by the motif of bathing. Since 2020, he has been a member of the Æ group, where he has created collaborative ways of painting. Since then, he has worked with more than forty people. He writes and paints at the same time, and in this way, he has moved towards a philosophical reflection on painting. In 2023 he received his doctorate from the Department of Art Theory and History. For a year he worked as an assistant at the Painting Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in the studio of visiting professor Zbyněk Sedlecky and later Hana Garova. Building a bridge between painting and theory, he opened some areas of painting to critical thinking and prepared his texts for publication. For the magazine Glosolália, he mainly contributed interviews with female artists. As a curator he has prepared fourteen exhibitions in Slovakia and the Czech Republic. He lives and works in Bratislava.