Exhibition of Esther Stocker in České Budějovice

The central theme of Esther Stocker's work is space. A phenomenon that fascinates her, offering countless possibilities and raising various questions. She explores its physical consistency as well as its ideological significance. The artist operates primarily within the spectrum of painting on canvas and real spaces that she uses for her visions. Through classical painting on canvas and wall paintings along with spatial installations (where one can literally speak of expanded painting), she presents a creation that reveals what feelings space evokes in her, how she perceives it, and what issues resonate with her the most. Painting is an important aspect, where the artist is interested in both the medium itself as well as the notion of painting as such.
Whether it involves paradoxes based on the contradiction between uniting precise geometric shapes that produce indeterminate visual perception—which can be caused by slight interventions into the regular structure—or works where the examination of large architectural forms is evident. The optical qualities of the works create an almost 3D illusion. Sometimes evoking a sort of hallucinatory geometric world. Esther Stocker's installations have the capacity to draw in viewers, who always see the same thing but differently. Thus, one can perceive oneself in the roles of both actor and observer simultaneously.
Although Esther Stocker also engages in video, photography, or includes text in her realizations, her works always rely on black, white, and gray colors. A characteristic feature is the use of structures (grids), layering, intersections, and connections. When we view Stocker's work from the perspective of the constructivist tradition or film/digital techniques, we uncover a disruption of ideas about order, space, and painting. Surface and space, precision and openness are not perceived as opposites, but as conditioning and defining phenomena.
Esther Stocker was born in 1974 in Italy, where she also studied alongside Vienna and the USA. She currently lives in Vienna, has a number of realizations in architecture, and in 2004 received the prestigious Otto Mauer Prize. Interest in her work is increasingly rising on the international scene. Evidence of this was three highly praised exhibitions last year. The artist presented the project "What I Don’t Know About Space" in London, a spatial installation at the MUMOK in Vienna, and the exhibition "Abstract Thought Is a Warm Puppy" at the CCNOA in Brussels.
Under Ellison's statement "There was nothing to be done - people were always just people and space was always their eternal enemy," lies a project that is the first solo presentation of Esther Stocker in the Czech Republic. In this case as well, the artist remained true to her tradition and created a new work—specifically for the spaces of the House of Art. The exhibition consists of a spatial installation complemented by paintings and text works.