Jana Ilková – Diary

Photoport, Rovniankova 4, Bratislava
Open: Wednesday – Thursday 3pm – 6pm

The medium-format analog monochromatic photographs by the author Jana Ilková complement the precise (almost conceptual) work with pictorial material and the almost reportage (manic) concept of working with time (events) in their uniqueness. Observational image studies capture the world that surrounds Ilková not only territorially, the inner line (vascular river) is associated with deep survival and the ability to share these processes.

Formally composed morphology saturated with disturbing content, maps of standing questions and closed (preserved) traces of changed events, indications of connection with the human present and the future.

Records of the environment, situations or indifferent solitary objects in a complex defined relationship with the environment or the observer simply attack the emotional and thought processes of the percipient. The tension between deciphering what is known and the context that artificially disrupts our ability to read the image is a source of obsessive tension, a transformation of the obligatory (with the expected interpretation seen) into an adventure of interpretations and thinking. The documentary series, originally focused on everyday record present in time and quantity, transformed into a more complex record, an exposition of the authenticity of the stay.

However, Iková is not the author of simple ideological or visual paradoxes, her statement is layered, she does not stand on a simple contrast of ideas or displayed elements, composed layers of information communicate with each other and regardless of the resulting formal simple gesture we are forced to confront archetypal models of questions about the most necessary laws of existence , to their answers, at the same time, we desire to build stability (peace), closely related not only to our future.

Ilková's work is refined and abdicated to the acute possibility of articulating the present, working with time (not only) time, the past and the future become its reference tool, free from inappropriate reactions and interpretations.

Ilková's photographs are a blind map of the context of human existence, they avoid the program and imperatives. Its position as an observer who does not claim the right to be the center of gravity or the key to decoding the image also becomes rare.

Eduard Kudláč

The exhibition program of the Photoport Gallery in 2022 was supported by the Slovak Art Council. The Slovak Art Council is the main partner of the project.