About the Artists: Peter Machata „Talking to Her"

Place: Gallery of Art, 1 Katedralny Square

Date: 27.04.-21.07.24

Opening: 11.05.24, 19:00

Opening hours:

Tuesday-Sunday: 12:00-18:00

Admission free

Hands and scars. The human identity unfolding in a tangle of papillary lines, traces of life vibrating in healed(?) wounds. In this sense, the collection of jewelry that Peter Machata presents at the exhibition could act as a non-conformist portrait gallery. His brooches and pendants relate to specific people. They are personalized, while remaining a territory of intimacy and integrity. Functioning both as a commitment and a pact, they are an extract of trust between the artist and “portrayed” person.

Peter Machata has long cultivated a deep interest in the communication between the jewelry designer and its wearer / viewer.  He formulates it across time through themes such as the relationship between mother and son, marriage, and childhood, and accentuates it through both small and large histories. He does not hesitate to pass them through the filters of the socialist past, contextualizing the role of the talisman, amulet, relic. He has a sense for the “rule of closure.” For him, jewelry is an object articulated by the rhythm of a living body and phrased by the waves of human experience. Today, they are women’s hands and the reality of pain, set in unorthodox medallions and coded with a moment of surprise and concern.

For several years now, intensive material and technological experimentation have featured in the duality of Machata’s profile and professional training as a sculptor. He works with digital tools and plastic-based materials, as the variability, precision and controllable malleability of this environment allows him to launch a multi-layered entry into the topic. He fuses digital and classic goldsmithing techniques, and in the fragile interface between the past and the present, he passionately gives voice to the most banal milling material and the goldsmith’s version of a medieval altar structure. 3D scans of the hand and scars at first glance indicate dactyloscopic correctness, but he is heading elsewhere. He demonstrates the will of the portrait to be an image expanding into space as well as an aposematic signal. He is interested in the tectonics of the object, the vigorous and subtle phasing of motion, the evocation of brutalist monumentality.

Sometimes the medallions undergo a vigorous deconstructivist cut, while at other times the vitality and fragility of the portraits is communicated by the artist’s method of layering Plexiglas reliefs in an almost holographic record. Peter Machata named one of the collections Život za bolesť / Life for Pain. His empathetic and courageous dialogue with the portrayed individuals can be both a trap and a challenge. Do we distance ourselves or do we want to be involved?

Viera Kleinová

Defragmentation brooch, silver, plastic, 80 x 80 x 40 mm, 2022

Live for pain brooch, silver, plexi glass, 100 x 80 x 15 mm, 2022

Portrait of a Lady pendant, silver, plastic, wood, 110 x 90 x 30 mm, 2022