Pavol ZELINA, PhD
Born 1978, SLOVAKIA
Occupation: research scientist, neurobiology
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Solo exhibitions:
‘Warum der Mensch’ – Gallery ‘Grüner Ängel’, Heidelberg, Germany 2003
‘Warum der Mensch’ – Gallery ‘Atelier Unsichtbar’, Stuttgart, Germany 2004
Gallery Maison de la Lithographie, Saint-Pourçain-sur-Sioule, France, Les Amis De Frédéric Charmat, 2015
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Group exhibitions:
Gallery ‘Grüner Ängel’, with Matthias Maas, Heidelberg, Germany 2004
International center Heidelberg, ‘Action Inter’ with poet Jörg Hartman, Heidelberg, Germany 2004
‘West Cove Studios’, City Wide Open Studios, New Haven, USA 2008
‘Musée Adzak’, Paris, FRANCE 2014-2015
Gallery ‘Art Keller 24’, Utrecht, NETHERLANDS 2018
Gallery ‘Art&Miss’, Paris, FRANCE 2019
About:
My art work is inspired by questions related to evolution of human cognition leading to production of art.
Questions like: Where comes the motivation for art creation from? What are the determinants for art creation? What is necessary? As well as what is arbitrary, useless or unnecessary.
Although I worked over time in different media (drawing, painting, photography, sound/music, video, writing) I use mainly painting to address these questions. Painting on one hand allows for a ‘reductionist’ experimental approach to questions. It allows to examine and to address particular aspect of the creation of a painting or art. And on the other hand and at the same time painting provides nearly infinite possibilities to approach all the aspects of the questions.
Over last twenty years I focused on questions like these:
- What determines the process that leads to a creation of something (e.g. painting) that catches the attention of the creator, triggers response (e.g. emotional) leading to further motivation to create more of the same?
- What are the parts of this process and which part needs to be consciously controlled? Which part can be left uncontrolled or randomized? And which of these parts, or their combination influence further creation of art.
- Can I paint without having the initial idea for the painting and without the idea of what determines the final product, i.e. how it should look like in the end?
- Can I tolerate mistakes?
- Can I introduce into painting something that I do not want to have in the painting or what I do not like in paintings?
- Do I need to communicate something in artwork? Is communication necessary part of art creation?
- And similar…
Current form of my paintings is a synthesis of painting processes related to answers to above mentioned questions. I create multilayered paintings where each layer in certain way relates to and answers one or more of the questions mentioned. At the same time I am constantly examining my way of answering the questions I pose about the process of painting and how the ‘answers’ can change in context of the ever developing process of creating new paintings.
The following step, after finishing a painting, is the reflection on what kind of sensations and feelings does the painting triggers in me and how does the painting influence me in relation to creation of next paintings or art works.
I support the entire process in conceptual projects including drawings, photography and other media. Drawings, for example, through reduction to black and white form allow performing more detailed examination of particular aspect of creating art. With drawing I could perform well defined conceptual projects focusing on one simple idea.
And photography, by its ability to capture a moment in time and space, allows focusing on visual inputs. Through photography it is possible to further analyze influence of particular visual inputs on creating art, i.e. on the visual expression or visual output.
Drawings and photography thus provide import input for paintings as source of particular information on perception, sensation, experience and cognitive processes related to creation of art.