Ľubomíra Sekerášová
Sekerášová’s artistic work draws inspiration from global pop culture, while also being influenced by the visual and conceptual world of Romanticism and nature religions. Her artistic program consistently engages with local realities and multi-layered personal symbolism, building upon meanings from art history and film language.
Thematically, she focuses on a deeper, metaphysical framework of experience, arising from the existence of an immaterial part of the world in confrontation with nature, but above all with the human psyche. The psyche must contend with the potential for psychological trauma and its own dark side, as well as the incomprehensibility of the external world. She appeals to sensitivity towards subtle deviations from reality – invisible, only felt, that defy rationality. They can therefore function on a different level of perception than that offered by the tradition of Enlightenment-Cartesian thinking.
Ľubomíra is informed by realistic historical painting, especially echoes of Symbolism and Art Nouveau. She draws in delicate strokes with pen and pencil, but often reaches for a more relaxed handwriting, which underlines the suggestiveness of the subjects and their spontaneity. With energetic strokes and hatching, she creates tension between the components of the image, and for these qualities, in her latest works, she transfers the charcoal drawing from paper to a more durable canvas. Her interest turns more towards drama and romantic spirituality. It is a kind of holistic approach that does not have a precisely defined entity. It acquires a deistic aura, depicted through the dramatic lighting and atmosphere that can also be found in her landscape works.
Sekerášová’s civilian figures deviate from normal behavior, and the entire scene is left in an ambiguous realm between the supernatural and the profane. They lose themselves in branches and leaves, or their psychic power is projected into a fiery aura, which can also be a flood of sun-drenched light. A specific offshoot is Dark Romanticism, which dealt with the supernatural and the occult. It connects the interest in inner experiences, suppressed or negative psychological states, and internal conflict, which is sublimated, for example, in the symbolism of mirroring. The key is the uncertainty between reality, fantasy, and dream, which creates a feeling of „unheimlich,“ unease, and fear of something that should have remained hidden within us (or around us). Without prejudice, she also looks at repressed images, such as death and decay, in which it is possible to find a form of melancholic poetics and a fascination with transience.
In her latest work, she is also inspired by eschatological thinking. She is particularly drawn to the atmosphere of films and series by David Lynch. Lynchianism as „a peculiar kind of irony in which the very terrifying and the very ordinary are combined in such a way as to reveal the constant suppression of the former in the latter“ can be found in disturbing deviations from the norm, or simply in their latent presence – a reflection, or a flicker in the corner. The psychology and self-exploration are also connected to the continuously developing portrait and self-portrait part of her work. In her latest installation work, she personifies in wildly acting people something like a personal transformation within the framework of processing trauma, drawing on the myth of the Phoenix. In her latest work, she explores the paradoxes of chance and hidden reality, as well as the subconscious, using detailed structured drawings.