Exhibition catalogue, Kunsthalle Nürnberg, edited by Harriet Zilch
Texts (German/English) by Harriet Zilch, Velten Wagner, conversation with the artist by Luisa Fink
232 pp. with 82 double-page colour and 170 b/w illustrations
Format 28.5 x 21.5 cm, open thread binding with hardcover jacket
48,00 €
Trees and creepers, birds and mushrooms, dwellings and scenic interiors: Monika Michalko (*1982 Sokolov, Czech Republic) combines figurative and object-like, organic and ornamental, abstract and architectural elements in her paintings. Her pictorial compositions are always fictitious: memories, phantasms and dream-like scenes form a painterly cosmos defined by its own laws. The specific tonality of her works also reinforces their dreamlike impression. Again and again, these compositions are vaguely reminiscent of modernist artists such as Paul Klee, Kasimir Malevich, Giorgio de Chirico, Odilon Redon and James Ensor. In 2023, she created her tableau vivant "Ship of Fools", in which various performers, including children and a dog, are shown in a backdrop of heavily upturned cardboard waves that threaten to break. Monika Michalko achieves an exciting balancing act between the animate and inanimate, static and movement. The image of a ship full of fools that has lost its way has many references to Nuremberg: the late medieval moral satire "The Ship of Fools" by Sebastian Brant (1457-1521) was one of the most popular German-language illustrated works of the 15th century. The young Albrecht Dürer was one of the artists with whom Brant collaborated on the illustrations in Basel. Monika Michalko finds a new interpretation of the motif and stages a contemporary metaphor for the state of our chaotic world.
Exhibitions:
Kunsthalle Nuremberg, 29/6 - 6/10/2024
Municipal Museum Engen + Gallery, 16/11/2024 - 21/1/2025
