Petra Lelláková and Vladimíra Večeřová’s exhibition is a continuation of their previous work, which is characterized by physical involvement and the transfer of artistic collaboration into video, creating vivid images and reactions to specific environments and landscapes, as well as to the heritage of old art. The project Gossip was created in the Sicilian landscape and is loosely related to the video Marmotour, in which the artists became part of the Carrara marble quarry. Here, the landscape and natural conditions do not play the role of background but, together with the memory of the place itself, of an equal factor with which they deal in different ways.
As well as with themselves, and always together with their own humor, in which we find the grotesque, the absurd or a slight dose of irony, closely related to a critical view of the prevalence of rationality in the contemporary world. In the current project, the artists are set on sandy coastal plains, in a golden light, in the ruins of an old brick factory reminiscent of a defunct temple. They become living sculptures, letting images of communication between the historically marked landscape and the body project freely through video.
Sometimes they dive into the surrounding environment and blend naturally with it, at other times it is a tortuous struggle between two alienated elements, the body and the environment in which it moves. In what way is it possible to re-approach and return to a neglected and, for us, almost forgotten understanding of the world around us that is not based on rational constructs but is linked to the emotional and irrational side of our personality? A side that has been attributed primarily to women, that has been ridiculed and repressed. The aim of the authors is not to ask for an answer, but rather to convey an attempt to re-approach this and to do so, as has already been said, with their typical wit and detachment.
