Lenka Chánová↓

About the work

The latent subject of the subtle watercolor portraits by Lenka Chánová is two grave pathological phenomena. She portrays women suffering from eating disorders along with female victims of home violence since the two problems are often interconnected. To Chánová, creating the portraits is a structured process that entails shared seeking of the position in which she pictures her models, as well as recording their stories that she tries to somehow imprint or translate into her works. They originate via an original artistic method: Chánová paints on the floor through thin japan paper, leaving the colors to seep through. She thus sees the resulting picture only after removing the upper layer. (Sometimes she exhibits the two layers – either one after another in a slight distance, which produces a specific 3D effect, or next to each other as two versions of a single representation.) The fine execution, the fragile support, and the life-size and even above life-size figures jointly make the paintings seem like an urgent expression of human corporeality with all the vulnerable and ephemeral.