Magdaléna Manderlová – From Memory

The landscapes of Magdaléna Manderlová (*1991) arise during her travels. And this graduate of the painting studio at Ostrava University likes to travel. During her studies, for work, or during her tour as a singer-songwriter, in recent years Magdaléna has visited Bulgaria, Iceland, France, Germany, and other countries.

It is from there and elsewhere that she brings back her diaries, drawings, photographs, and melodies. She writes in both Czech and English, and she draws with what she finds and on whatever she comes across. It is this confluence of multiple media that is characteristic for her. Her landscapes aren’t predefined by the boundaries of any genre. Magdaléna finds boundaries only when she sets out on her travels – and captures them with words, images, or music. From sea and sand, from the wind, from rays of sunlight and the shadows of trees.

In her work, she doesn’t describe what she sees. In any case, she doesn’t work on her paintings in the field, as one could expect from a landscape artist, but returns to the landscape once she is home, in the studio or at her desk. As if she preferred to capture a memory. She is therefore not really concerned with accuracy – with an authentic record of a place. She prefers to play colours in music, to describe touches in a song text, to paint scents and sounds. From memory.

The June edition of Polička/Shelf exhibits small notebooks from her stay in Iceland in 2015. Each is a unique work, similar to the others, but never the same. Though she created several dozen, we are exhibiting only a few. The rest she gave away, or sold them at symbolic prices during concerts and performances.

Anna Pleštilová