Exhibition
Published 19. 4. 2023
Ivo Jedlička – toxic bloom
Flowers carnivorous, prickly, poisonous, climbing. They're all around us, yet often overlooked in urban environments. Flora symbolises a fertile environment, the birth and foundation of life, but its wilting also demonstrates the impermanence of all that is initially alive. Nature is often portrayed as something idyllically benign - until we might forget that its system is inherently based on cruelty and constant danger.
toxic bloom - the sculpture on display here represents an exotic flower - rare and fragile, but also potentially dangerous. It boasts an alluring - almost sensual - shape, a delightfully rounded belly and a defiantly open flower from which poisonous resin oozes. The dewy and misty environment in which the plant germinated is infested with its toxic inflorescence.
This flower from distant lands, where even the wisest travellers have not yet dared to visit, intoxicates us with its sweet odour... Perhaps we should not approach it, but such a warning is usually the greatest temptation. Its lure can be a seductive trap and bait. We become the insect that settles on the beautiful carnivore and it devours it and never let us go.
Curators: Agáta Hošnová, Karolína Voleská
Author: Ivo Jedlička
Author of graphic design: Michal Tůma
Author: Ivo Jedlička
Author of graphic design: Michal Tůma
Photo: Lukáš Hlavín
Video: Marie Hantáková
* Galerie NIKA is open 24 hours, 7 days a week → metro B, Karlovo náměstí, entrance via Palackého náměstí *