Dana Sahánková: You will never find a place in your shell

Accompanying publication to the exhibition of the same name by Dana Sahánková at Trafo Gallery.

"I'm painting a new picture. After such a difficult even more terrible. I am only now beginning to realize that what I draw, I have to experience. But once I've started, I can't stop, I can't just fire him, because someone else is in charge. I can see that this time it's so crazy that it can't end other than my death. But the shape is not yet clear.” Dream D. S. from 31/07/2017

Dana Sahánková continuously works with the medium of large-format drawing. The title of her exhibition and publication of the same name "You will never find standing in your shell" is a modification of a quote from one of Mephisto's replicas. In the background of the project, a Faustian theme can be felt, which the author touches on during the longer-term visual thematization of time and memory. To express them, he has long used an arsenal of selected animals (wolves, dogs, deer, cats) in relation to the space, which is constantly changing. This allegorized relationship, which is a mutual dynamic "growth" of the figures and their frameworks, is sometimes supplemented by mythical figures with some unspecified mission (e.g. the returning dreamlike figure of the little angel). The predators represented by the chosen animals are removed from their dominant roles and become victims of the passage of time. Their bodies, full of aggressive gestures, disintegrate into fragments and are assembled into new wholes evoking a dreamlike atmosphere, states of ecstasy, enlightenment or hallucinations. Unreal is the "rippling space" itself, the construction of which is constantly disintegrating and collapsing, or transforming as a result of an unknown mechanism. The viewer can often feel like an uninvited guest here. We delve into deep psychoanalytic situations in their polarizing rawness, or into constellations that, in a metaphorical shorthand, exceed the human scale not only on the physical level, but above all on the level of reflective consciousness. By escalating uncertainty, the author reveals the reverse side of the systematized and rationalized world in which we live.

In the words of the curator of the exhibition and the author of the texts, Petr Vaňous: "When viewed from a distance, the drawings unite into a kind of abstract psychosign, the basis of which is an unconscious search for composition in the work process based on associations and the integration of subliminal sensations, such as dreams and involuntary memory. If we approach the drawing physically, it begins to open up to us, to complicate its form, but also to deviate in terms of meaning into pre-prepared side corners and dead ends."

Texts: Petr Vaňous, Iva Mladičová, Dana Sahánková
Graphic design: Jana Vahalíková
Production: Blanka Čermáková
Photographers: Lukáš Kliment, Tomáš Rasl, Jaroslav Brabec
Translation: Phil Jones
Text Proofs: Tereza Hubáčková
Printing: Tiskárna Helbich, s. r. o.
Number of copies: 300
Published by Spolek Trafačka as its 19th publication
Number of pages 130
Language CZ/ENG