Painting
The current exhibition at the Nedbalka Gallery presents the work of Jana Farmanová, a leading figure in contemporary Slovak painting, who has been active in the art scene for nearly three decades.
Recommended!
12.11.2024, Tue – 16.02.2025, Sun
Nedbalka Gallery
The main genre in Jana Farmanová’s work is figurative painting, through which she develops universally human themes, especially those concerning women. Women were among her initial themes. Through her works, she explores the relationship women have with themselves, and how they cope with specific depicted realities. The female body in her art is a bearer of emotion, situation, or experience. Her figures represent the embodiment of emotion, the visual expression of it.
According to the artist, she materializes situations, emotions, or experiences through painting, giving them form through color and composition. It is evident that in Farmanová’s works, the connection between external physicality and internal experience is crucial. The physical body of a person is limiting, giving them certain boundaries within which their behavior oscillates. In contrast, internal imagination is the part of human existence that gives them freedom. This ambivalence is ever-present in Farmanová’s paintings.
She focuses primarily on figurative compositions, in which a vast knowledge of art history is combined with a great deal of innovation and a passion for the medium of painting. She is often inspired by various historical periods and movements that fascinate her as an artist. She places their features into different contexts and assigns them new meanings. She distances herself from veristic depictions of reality. The dominant theme in Farmanová’s work is women. The female body in her art is a bearer of emotion or experience. According to the artist, she materializes situations, emotions, or experiences through painting, giving them form through color and composition. The physicality of a person is limiting, giving them certain boundaries within which their behavior oscillates. In contrast, internal imagination is the part of human existence that gives them freedom. This ambivalence is constantly present in Farmanová’s paintings.
Jana Farmanová’s work is characterized by extensive thematic series. She usually focuses attention on one theme, which she then develops in multiple paintings. As she herself says, it is for her “a kind of ‘montage,’ as if I were thinking of the paintings like film frames. One is not enough to express something, for the situation I am painting, I again have the need to ‘look’ at it a little differently—either I zoom in or change the angle from which I observe the composition or the object.” These series of works are the result of a flow of emotions that the artist lets run freely, pushing her boundaries and searching for a form that becomes the carrier of these emotions.
Jana Farmanová studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bratislava under Professor Ján Berger. She completed her studies in 1996, at a time when painting was going through a challenging period. It had been pushed to the margins of the art scene, with other forms of artistic expression being preferred. Despite the difficult situation, Farmanová remained faithful to painting. For her, painting is not just one of the possibilities of expression, but a necessity. Farmanová has had numerous solo and group exhibitions both in Slovakia and abroad. Her works are represented in many private and gallery collections.