The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Marketa Klicova’s recent drawings seem to reveal a constant obsession: does form follow construction, or can unpremeditated forms draw to composition? Although such questions were central in Bauhaus times for instance, a young artist’s mind is able to renew them. It is quite difficult to look at some of her new works – especially those with squares or dots –without thinking either of Russian avant-garde, or even artists who ironically played with avant-gardism, such as Picabia. Perhaps the latter’s freedom could serve as a guide for us to consider the complex and diverse work we are looking at now.

Proliferation seems a key-word to define it. From one work to the other, Marketa Klicova seems to follow her own path – not follow, but create it: making it anew at each step. This is construction. A free sense of construction. Structure comes as a result but is never definitely given. Sometime the artist may fail to do what she has in mind – no matter; go back to work, each new drawing will help to resolve the question no one asks: “And now, what to do?”

Would the way go to nowhere, would the question have no answer but the work itself, can an artist stop working? The work goes with its own world, in which the artist and us live for a while, before new works and worlds replace them. It is here she wants us to live today. Let’s trust her. She certainly knows the place better than we.

François Michaud

Paris, 13, June, 2009.