Vendula Chalánková deals with seemingly trivial things or let´s say with the banality of everyday life. When you meet her, she usually just stands still and smiles and if she does say anything, so it´s brief and in a soft voice. She usually just nods. She is incredibly polite, which makes you feel that she does not quite fit into this world and that she looks a bit lost in it. It may sound strange but her vulnerable way of communication in fact disarms almost everyone. It mostly isn´t her who sweats and feels uncomfortable. It´s hard to say why. Perhaps it´s because she sees and does things differently. She spends weeks cutting out paper and pasting visual rapid technological effects. If she can´t afford to buy modern gadgets, so she simply draws them. In her comics she transforms traditional life clichés about happiness standardized by TV production into a series of awkward and embarrassing situations. In her abstract painting the size of a living room she doesn´t even try to hide the motif of pork headcheese. For her the photovoltaic panel is a symbol of contemporary landscape. Vendula Chalánková is incredibly and painfully honest. Her work spans between „to have or to be“ and imitation seems to be her key theme.
Radek Wohlmuth
