Štěpánka Šimlová

Years of Levitation

03.12.2015 / 6PM

Štěpánka Šimlová is an artist who contributed a significant share in the process of the shaping of the Czech art scene in the 1990s. She graduated from the Prague Academy of Fine Arts in 1996, one of a member of a dynamic generation of young artists who began exhibiting while they were still students.

Šimlová is mainly known for her work in digitally manipulated photo-montages and video, although she is also an impressive illustrator, whose drawings and paintings have been described as graffiti freestyle.The field of her topics has similar broadness ranging from manipulated landscapes, through personal topics, topics with gender undertones, all the way to subjects containing social or political dimension.

In recent years she has returned to her earlier work with installations and objects - many of which play with scale, or deliberately confuse perception and reality. Typically her work  - such as her exhibition 'Years of Levitation' which took place at Prague's Colloredo-Mansfeld Palace from 20 November 2015 to 20 March 2016 - is inspired by personal memories and recollection.

"It's like falling asleep while listening to a radio newsreel," says the artist. "What I'm interested in today is no longer the meaning of the news content as such but rather the way my mind takes it in and processes it, and the key according to which it then proceeds to store this information."